


Journeyman

by Lacylu42



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Bad Wolf, F/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Telepathy, Time Lords and Ladies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacylu42/pseuds/Lacylu42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being left at Bad Wolf Bay, things are... complicated between Rose and her new (new new?) Doctor. Can a Torchwood mystery and shocking revelation about the nature of this parallel universe help them find one another, or will it tear them apart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which there are cronuts, fedoras, and a shed.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was angry with him. 
> 
> Was it about the cronuts?

"Do you think they have these on — y'know. Old Earth? Earth Mark 1?"

"What makes it Mark 1? These are parallel universes, roughly the same age as far as I can tell, with the same"—

"I just meant 'cos we were there first."

"Oh.  Right."

"I bet they don't have these, though. Nothin' like this.  These are gorgeous."

"What?"

"The cronuts!"

He looked up at her and squinted at her across the table through his glasses, clearly not following the conversation at all.  "Oh, right. They're alright."

Rose rolled her eyes expressively.  "Go," she said.  

"What?"

"Go!  Go tinker. It's clearly all you can think about if you're not even impressed with the cronuts."

He smiled a bit sheepishly.  "Sorry. I have been thinking about a problem…."

"It's fine!"

"Are you sure?"

“I told you, I’m going in to work today anyway.” Rose smiled.  "Go."

He reached across the table and squeezed her hand, then bolted for the door, striding across the dewy lawn toward the shed on the edge of the woods. 

Rose sighed and glanced over at the big house.  She still had time before she needed to leave. Maybe she'd go grab a cuppa with her Mum before work...

 

~*~

 

"Good morning, sweetheart! How're things?"

Rose rolled her eyes as she shut the kitchen door behind her. "Don't, Mum."

"Oi! I can't ask how you are?"

"Mum, you've been asking 'how are things' every day for two weeks now. You think I don't know what you mean?"

Jackie crossed her arms defensively.  "Well, that's just the point, sweetheart. It's been two weeks! I thought for sure with the two of you snogging your faces off in Norway—"

"Mum!"

"—that we'd have to pry you apart with a crowbar, but…"

"Look, we're just taking things slow."

"The years you were together before wasn't slow enough for you?"

"What do you want, Mum? We're living together, in your guest house, not fifty steps from your back door, and not having sex. I'd have thought it would be your idea of a perfect situation!"

Jackie came around to stand next to Rose and pushed her hair back from her face gently. "I just want you to be happy, is all."

"I am happy."

Jackie snorted.  "Being not sad s'not the same thing."

Rose sighed, exasperated.  "This isn't a fairy tale, Mum! It's not a romance novel. We're not just going to fall into bed together." She felt herself blush, and ducked her head, hoping her mother didn't notice the telltale sign that a fairy tale was exactly what she'd wanted.  

"So, what? You just go back to the way things were before? Sleepin' in separate rooms, being all cutesy cuddly, kissin' now and then and that's enough?"

"It has to be," Rose said firmly. "For now."   _It's what he wants_ , she didn't say out loud. She'd made a promise to stay with him forever — even if that meant being frustrated for the rest of her days.  She'd made her peace with that a long time ago.

"It's not what _Himself_ would've wanted," Jackie said pointedly. Rose looked up, shocked.  She could tell by her mother's expression that she knew it was a low blow, but she wasn't about to take it back.

"Oh, really? You've got some vast insight into the brain of a thousand year old alien now, have you?"  She pushed back from the table 

"I'm just saying…" Jackie started.

"I've got to go to work," Rose cut her off.

 

~*~

 

Teddy adjusted his hat — a fedora, it was called — in the wardrobe mirror, feeling very pleased with himself.  He was all set for his visit to Earth, and would be landing any second.  With one final glance, he strutted out of the wardrobe and back to the control room. 

A ping drew his attention from one of the consoles.  He pulled a pair of thick, square, horn-rimmed glasses from his pocket and slipped them on.

"Void radiation?  Silly humans.  Weren't they doing some kind of experiments, punching holes across dimensions? Could've told them _that_ would end badly.  Probably left over from… Hmm.  But you're right.  That is a lot.  Highly concentrated.  Could be something came through?"  He tapped the console with one finger, thoughtfully.  "Where is it?  Ooooh, London. Always wanted to visit London.  Right. Take us to it." 

The TARDIS hummed in reply.

 

~*~

 

As much as she didn't want to admit it, Rose knew her mother had a point.  

Something was wrong.

She hadn't wanted to think about it too much.  She'd had plenty else to occupy her mind, frankly.  But her mother wasn't the only one who had expected her relationship with him to change — to escalate.

And yet.  And yet…  

It was her fault.  She was sure of it.  Yes, they had snogged on the beach.  Madly.  Passionately.  He had told her he loved her, and it was everything in the world — in two universes, actually — that she'd ever wanted to hear. In that moment, she'd had no doubts. 

And then, she'd heard the TARDIS, that familiar sound that had once filled her with so much hope and joy, and it was as though it ripped through her and tore her heart (one, pitiful human heart) in half. She'd turned away from him and run after his other self, and she knew he'd felt rejected.  

It was all her fault.

They'd tried to play it off, casually, of course.  They hadn't talked about it, _of course_. All the way back to England, they'd held hands, sat close together, even tried kissing a few times. And every time it felt weird and awkward.  Mum got them a hotel room, expecting they'd want to share, and he'd sat up all night, staring out the window. 

And from there, they'd just sort of fallen back into old routines.  They held hands.  They hugged.  They sat close together sometimes. He still seemed to want to be touched, to crave physical contact as much as the other — as much as he always had.  He kissed her on the forehead, or her temple, or her hair.   

And that was it.

He didn't take well to the hustle and bustle of staying with Pete and Tony and her mum, so they'd moved to the old carriage house, refitted long before Rose arrived as a guest house. 

And he had taken one bedroom, she another. 

By the time she reached Torchwood Tower, she'd worked herself up into a right snit about the whole thing.  He'd been acting strange ever since they'd arrived, and she'd put it down to… Well, she'd put it down to breaking his hearts — no, heart.

He only had one now, and she'd trod on it by trying to chase after the man who had pretty much dumped her in another universe after she'd risked everything—everything—to get back to him. 

Wasn't his fault, and she'd tried to be kind to him. But he didn't seem to want her kindness.  Her company, sure. Her cooking, absolutely. And sometimes, every once in a great while, it seemed he wanted more.

Then he pulled back and ran off to the shed, the tosser. 

She switched on her tablet and started flicking through reports she was supposed to be looking at. It had dismayed her when she'd first started working at Torchwood how much she didn't know. So she'd made it her business to know. Worked day and night, studying, researching, learning anything anyone would teach her. If she was going to be Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, she needed to be on her game.

She paused at one of the reports about an unusual spike in artron energy.  That rang a bell, but she couldn't remember exactly where she'd heard it before.  She sighed, making a note to look it up.  

She and Pete had both thought that things would be easier now, with a real resident expert Time Lord to call on whenever they didn't know something, but he had made his opinions about Torchwood known loud and clear. Had said he wouldn't be working for them anytime soon and trucked off to the shed.

He spent all his time in the bloody shed. Commandeered from the grounds keepers and nobody else allowed in. At first she'd thought he just needed his space.  He'd asked her to bring home this or that from Torchwood, or occasionally they'd find some random bit of something he wanted when they went out to the shops in London.  She wondered if he wasn't building himself a new screwdriver.  But he didn't say. "Tinkering," was all he'd say, and it infuriated her.

She hadn't crossed two universes to come in second place to a bloody screwdriver.

She jumped as her mobile buzzed on the desk, and realized she'd been sitting, brooding, for nearly an hour. A twinge of guilt struck her as she saw his name on the phone.

"Hello?" she answered.

A moment later, two technicians passing her office jumped as they heard Ms. Tyler shouting, "No, I bloody well will not! If you want them you can bloody well come down here and get them yourself! I'm not your sodding delivery service!"

 

~*~

 

Half-human or not, he was smart enough to know when he'd just been told off about something that had absolutely no relation to the items he'd just asked Rose to bring him from Torchwood. 

She was angry with him.  

Was it about the cronuts?

No. Probably not. Definitely not.

Probably.

He sighed and leaned on the workbench in front of him. Things had been… strained between them ever since they'd got here. 

It was all his fault, of course.

When she'd kissed him on the beach, for a moment everything had been perfect.  Exactly what he'd always wanted, what he'd always dreamed it would be. She had chosen him! Maybe it would all work out. Maybe—

But before he'd even had a chance to really enjoy it, his better half had taken the TARDIS and gone.

And Rose had tried to go after him.

Who could blame her, really? If he hadn't known what was coming, he might have been the one chasing after the sound, after his life that was disappearing forever.

He'd held her hand as they left that cursed beach, sat next to her on the train as they tried to reach a zeppelin field. 

And watched the tears stream silently down her face when she thought he was asleep. 

He had done that. He caused her that pain by not being what she wanted.  Only a carbon copy of the original.  

After that, after seeing her hurt because of him (either him, both), he'd known he couldn't go on pretending. He couldn't ask her to act as though nothing had happened, nothing had changed. 

He felt like the same man in so many ways, in all the ways that counted, but he was so different in so many other ways. Human heart, human limitations he'd never had before. Not to mention being earth-bound — on the wrong Earth.  He growled as a wave of anger washed over him and he suddenly turned and punched the wall viciously. The pain that rocketed up his arm cleared his head a bit, and he stared at the blood blooming across his knuckles.

That was the other thing that had changed. His better half hadn't been joking when he said he'd been born in war.  And that did odd things to a person. He couldn't subject Rose to all that — not again. 

He wanted to prove to them both that he could be the man she loved before he asked her for another chance.  

He reached out and ran his fingertips across the edge of the glass box that sat on the table in front of him.  

He just hoped he could do it before it was too late.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm looking for a beta and/or Brit picker for this story, so please nominate yourself if interested! I'm lacylu42 on Tumblr.


	2. In which there is a punching bag, an introduction, and an invitation.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are we expecting any planetary conflagrations? It’s just, I need to know what shoes to wear.”

Rose pounded away at the punching bag in time with the pop music blaring in her headphones.  

It had taken a while for the Torchwood higher-ups to wrap their brains around the fact that she didn't — wouldn't — learn to use or carry a sidearm, but when they did, it was decided that she'd better be taught self-defense, then. The field commander still wasn't happy about it, but Rose wouldn't be deterred.  

She thought it's what he would've wanted. And she'd held the line. Only time she’d picked up a gun was to fight the Daleks, and she figured even _he_ would make an exception for that.

So, they'd started teaching her to fight. Hand-to-hand combat.  At first she was ruddy awful.  She wasn't in bad shape, considering all the running she was used to doing, but she her coordination and timing had been terrible.

 _THWAP_.  She smacked the punching bag hard enough to make it swing slightly and felt herself smile.

She was getting better. 

"Ms. Tyler."

Rose jumped as her assistant touched her lightly on the shoulder. She swung round and nearly punched him in the face.  Luckily, he had good reflexes.  

"Ianto!" she exclaimed, yanking the earphones out of her ears.  "Don't sneak up on me!  I could've knocked you out!"  She grinned despite herself.  "And what good would you be to me then?"

Unflappable, Ianto raised an amused eyebrow.  "I just thought you should know, there's a man here demanding to see you."

Rose gave him an incredulous look as she started to take off her boxing gloves.  She was dripping with sweat, hair plastered to her face.  She might have been taking out some serious frustrations on the punching bag.  "I'm not exactly in any state for a meeting," she said.

"Oh, I don't mind." 

Rose's head snapped up to see him leaning in the doorway, ankles crossed, hands jammed in his pockets, smirking at her. That arrogant, knowing smile, that slim suit, that _great_ hair.  She couldn't believe it was possible, but her heart sped up at the sight of him.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, wincing inwardly as she realized how accusatory she sounded.

"Well, someone suggested that if I wanted a some ion generators or a reverse osmosis filter, I'd better come down here and get them myself."

Rose couldn't hide her surprise.  He'd been so against Torchwood when he first arrived, he'd never even set foot in the building.  Pete had offered him a job, or a lab, or whatever he wanted, and he'd flat refused.  To see him here of his own volition… She must have cut a little deeper than she'd intended with her tirade.

"I'm sorry," she said wearily, wiping her face with her towel.  "I didn't mean all that.  I would've brought it for you."

"Nah, you're alright. And, I thought it was about time I saw where you worked." He looked around, pointedly.  "Bit more athletic than I'd expected."

She couldn't help but crack a smile. "Let me show you around—" Suddenly she remembered what she was wearing.  "God, I must be minging!" She pulled the sweatshirt she was wearing off over her head, leaving her in a thin vest clinging with sweat. "Tell you what. Ianto, you take him down to the lab and get him what he needs — on my authority, or Dad's if necessary. I'll get a quick shower and meet you two in the mess in an hour for tea, yeah?"

She looked over to him for confirmation and caught him staring, his brown eyes dark and suddenly more intense.  She felt a shiver run down her back as his gaze reached her face, and they locked eyes for the briefest of moments.

"Right!" he said loudly.  "Lead on, Ianto Jones!"

"Absolutely," Ianto said smoothly. "Right this way, Mister…?"

"Doctor, actually.  Doctor Noble.  Er, James Noble."

Rose's eyes widened. Had he just picked a name?  He glanced over his shoulder and shrugged at her, making a _What was I supposed to do?_ face as he left.  She smiled and shook her head. Only he would do something as important as picking a name on a whim.

As she marched into the locker room for a shower, she couldn't help thinking of that look he had given her.  And those big, dark, hungry eyes.

On anyone else, she would have called it desire.

"Better make that a cold shower," she muttered as she turned on the taps.

~*~

Rose sat so long in the canteen that the tea in her paper cup was cold by the time Ianto came hurrying into view.  Alone.  She was on her feet in a second.

“I think you should come,” he said cryptically.  Rose’s heart leaped into her throat as she nodded and followed him down to the lower level where most of the research labs were.  What could’ve gone wrong? He was just supposed to be shopping for whatever those bits and bobs were he wanted. Did he see something he didn’t approve of? Had there been an accident? What if he was—

“Oooooh.  Brilliant!  That’s genius, that is. And, really, that’s saying quite a lot when I’m in the room.”

Rose and Ianto rounded the corner into one of the labs to find a head of crazy brown hair bent over the lab table with a dark one. Rose recognized Malcolm, one of the scientists who’d been on the dimension cannon team. 

Whatever they were looking at on the table sparked and they both made interested noises.

Rose cleared her throat and they looked up.

“Rose!  Have you seen this? He’s developed a void radiation detector that can not only differentiate based on which dimension the particles passed through but also how fast they’re decaying and therefore how long it’s been since they passed through the rift and how far away they’ve traveled.”

Rose nodded. “Cool. What do you use it for?”

“No idea!” Malcolm said happily.  “But maybe it will come in useful some day.  Your friend knows a lot about interdimensional particle physics! Are you recruiting him for the program?”

“No,” Rose said at the exact same moment he said, “Yes!” 

“Wait, what?” Rose said.  “What happened to ‘under no circumstances will I ever’—”

He raised his chin and sniffed.  “Circumstances change.”

“Well, I for one would be glad to have you on the team, Dr. Noble,” Malcolm said, shaking his hand warmly. “Your theories on time travel sound fascinating!”

“Circumstances change?” Rose asked as they made their way back upstairs to her office.  

“Rose,” he said suddenly serious. “Can I have one of those?”

“A Malcolm?”

“What? No! Well, maybe. No, a lab.”

“Pete offered you a lab and you said no!”

He scoffed.  “I thought it would be, you know.  A _lab_. A boring, human-y, 21st century—”

“Oooooh, I see,” Rose said with a grin.  “Now that you’ve seen what kind of toys we’ve got, you want to play.”

He made a face.  Then said, “Can I?”

She laughed as they opened the door to her office. “I’m sure you can.  Ianto, will you get my dad on the phone so we can see if he can find some space for this nutter?”

“Right away, Ms. Tyler.”

Ianto pulled the door shut behind him as they fell into seats around her desk.  Rose felt happy… and a little suspicious of the feeling.

"So. James Noble?"

He grinned and shrugged. 

"You realize you're stuck with it now," she pointed out. 

He frowned a little.  "Didn't really think about it. Old habits I 'spose.  Still, James Noble. It's as good a name as any."

She grinned wickedly. "Can I call you Jim?"  

His face showed exactly the horror she'd expected, and she laughed.

“I’m glad you came down,” she said, carefully. 

“Me too,” he said.  Their eyes met for a moment — then suddenly he became very interested in her tablet. 

“That’s got a password — which… apparently means nothing to you,” she said as he quickly bypassed the security and started scrolling through her reports.

She watched him for a moment, bewildered. Would she ever have a clue what was going on in that head of his?

“Rose.”

“Hmmm?”

"I think we need to go on a date."

She blinked, wondering if she was daydreaming. "Sorry, what?"

"A date. A proper date.  You, me, dinner, dancing maybe."  

Rose tried not to gape.  "Did you say dancing?"

He looked slightly offended. "I can dance!"

She leaned back and crossed her arms across her chest. "Alright. Out with it. Who are you and what have you done with my Doctor?"

He glanced at her, surprised. She realized, suddenly, that she’d been avoiding calling him that.  

“I’ve taken you on dates before,” he insisted.

“Yeah, but your idea of a date tends to end with a planet blowing up,” Rose pointed out. “Are we expecting any planetary conflagrations? It’s just, I need to know what shoes to wear.”

He grinned.  “Fair enough. No conflagration-appropriate footwear required.”

She squinted at him.  “So, just like, a proper date.”

“A proper date.”

“At a restaurant?”

“I was thinking a club, maybe.”

“And we would be going there to…?”

He burst out of his chair, exasperated. “To have a drink!” he exclaimed, pacing. “And a dance!  And… maybe, if the mood strikes… check out these unusual artron energy readings your scientists picked up.”

“Aha! I knew there was something else going on!”

He stuck his hands in his pockets.  “If you don’t want to go...”

Rose stood up and grinned.  “Are you kidding? Sounds like exactly the sort of date I’d love.”


	3. In which there are inappropriate shoes, minor sevenths, and banana daiquiris. (A LOT of banana daiquiris.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Did you really just hand that woman a banana out of your pocket?"

“Yowza,” the Doctor said as Rose stepped into the room. He couldn’t tear his eyes off of her. They’d gone back to the house to change, and it’d taken him all of five minutes to put on a clean shirt and then he’d spent the rest of the time remarking — loudly — about the ridiculous length of time women — not just human women, women of lots of species, and some men actually — needed to get ready — and then yowza.

“I’m sorry,” he said, blinking and shaking his head. “Was that inappropriate? It was more a sort of guttural reaction than a conscious word choice.”

She laughed, a look of utter delight on her face, and he decided that was even better than any dress. Even the teeny tiny, skin tight, deep purple curve-hugging thing she was sporting at the moment.

“So long as it doesn’t become a catchphrase, I think you’re alright.”

Not for the first time, he felt the physical stirrings of desire percolating through his body. He made a mental note: skin-tight-purple-dress-Rose was a positive as far as his human hormones were concerned.

Then again, apparently so was sweaty, stinky, punching-inanimate-objects Rose. 

He was beginning to sense a pattern. 

“Those are definitely not planet exploding shoes,” he said, partly to distract himself. She held out one leg to model the pointy, strappy high-heeled contraption she was wearing and he swallowed hard, realizing that this had perhaps not been the distraction he’d been hoping for. Had she always had such long legs? What made calf muscles suddenly so attractive?

“You like them?” she asked.

“We-elll, they’re alright, I suppose. But I can’t imagine you could run very far in them.” He offered her his arm, which she took with a smile, warm against his side.

“You said this date would be running-lite,” she said as they made their way to the black sedan waiting for them. The driver opened the door to let Rose in, and the Doctor jogged around to the other side to slide in next to her. 

If one had to travel by car, he did rather like back seats.

“I make no promises,” he insisted. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a little box he’d nicked when Malcolm wasn’t looking. 

“What’s that, then?” she asked.

“It’s an artron energy detector that Malcolm built,” he said. “It goes ding when there’s… Well, artron energy, actually.”

“Does what it says on the tin,” Rose said with a smile. She grabbed his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. “So remind me again — what’s artron energy?”

“It’s basically time energy,” the Doctor said trying to decide simultaneously what he should be doing with his hands. When had it got so hot in this car? Could they roll down a window? “Organic matter that’s traveled through time gets saturated with it and it gives off a distinct signature.”

“So we’re looking for a time traveler?” Rose said, sounding excited. 

He felt his stomach clench. “Well, maybe. Could just be something fell through time. There’s a rift here, too, you know. Might just be a… time traveling stick.”

“Oh.” He could hear the disappointment in her voice. And he couldn’t think of anything to say to make it go away.

The club was a trendy new spot, pretending to be an old-timey speakeasy. In the front, it was done up like a bakery — fairy cakes and everything — but give the right password (dragées) and you were admitted to a retro-styled bar with lots of dark wood and leather seats. 

“Well, this is anachronistic!” the Doctor said, squinting around at the decor as the hostess led them to a table. “The light fixtures are all wrong, this music is from the 1940s, not the 20s, and they never would’ve had…” he caught Rose’s expression. “But it’s fun!”

“I’ll have a Cosmo,” Rose said, shaking her head conspiratorially at the waitress. 

“Banana daiquiri,” the Doctor said promptly, ignoring Rose’s smirk. He pulled out his artron detector surreptitiously as the waitress walked away and flicked it on. Then smacked it a couple of times. 

“Anything?” Rose asked.

“It’s not very finely attuned,” the Doctor said, smacking it again. “It’s registering… something. But it could just be picking up the residual radiation off of us.” He looked up and looked around the room. “And — I dunno. There’s something else. Something feels… Strange. Sort of familiar…”

The waitress returned, setting the drinks on the table, and the Doctor grabbed his distractedly and downed half of it in two gulps. 

“UGH!” he exclaimed, pulling a face. “What is th— is that synthetic banana?! No, no, no, no. You can’t do a proper— wait just a minute.” He started digging around in the pocket of his jacket, ignoring Rose’s horrified expression. “Here. Here. Take that and — no, leave this one. Just go make me a proper drink. And put one of those little umbrellas in it this time.” He glanced over at Rose finally. “Please.”

“Did you really just hand that woman a banana out of your pocket?” 

“You didn’t try this,” he said, finishing the rest of the offending drink with a scowl. 

Rose raised an eyebrow. “Might want to pace yourself.”

He pulled a face and shook his head. “It’s fine. Alcohol doesn’t affect Time Lords the way it does humans.”

“Famous last words,” Rose muttered, but she suspected he wasn’t paying attention.

~*~

Teddy watched the couple carefully from his seat at the end of the bar. He felt something strange, like an itch at the back of his mind he couldn’t quite place. It felt a little like the sense he got when another Time Lord was near, but different. Like… Like if Time Lords were one note, this was a strange harmony. A minor seventh. Related, but different. 

He didn’t know what that might mean, and he didn’t like not knowing.

The girl was almost certainly human, but there was something about her, too. She seemed odd. Out of place. The man was even stranger. 

But there was something familiar about him as well. Like a memory he couldn’t quite remember. Or that wasn’t quite his.

He pulled out a little brown notebook from the pocket of his jacket and carefully opened it. At first it appeared blank, then a series of intricate interlocking circles and symbols appeared, moving across the page at great speed.

“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. He shut the notebook and put it back into his pocket.

Teddy shook his head and took a pull from his pint. 

This trip was getting more fascinating by the minute.

~*~

“How’s this, then?” The bartender herself had brought over the second banana daiquiri. She had long, straight black hair and was wearing a tight waistcoat. As a top. Rose was unimpressed.

The Doctor accepted the drink and took a tentative sip. “Ah!” he exclaimed appreciatively. “Much better! See? Proper banana makes all the difference.”

The pretty bartender smiled at him and looked like she was going to say more when she caught Rose’s eye. “Yeah, well, enjoy,” she said quickly.

“I think I’m going to have a little look around,” the Doctor said, finishing most of his drink in a few large gulps and rising from the table. “See if I can get anything on this thing.”

“Want me to come with?” Rose asked, starting to rise. 

“In those shoes?” he asked playfully. She swatted his arm. “Nah, you stay here. Keep an eye out for anyone — or any thing — that looks suspicious. I’ll be back in a tick.” He turned to go and then turned back quickly. “And don’t touch my drink!”

Rose made a face at him and shooed him off. She scanned the room, stirring her drink. This felt… good. Familiar. They were investigating. Maybe that’s all he needed: more of a purpose. Maybe she could show him that—

“Hello.” 

Rose looked up to find a hipster leaning on her table.

He looked about her age with longish, curly chestnut hair and long mutton chops. He was wearing a fedora, a vintage Vitex tee-shirt, and a pair of gray plaid trousers over what looked to be green bowling shoes. 

“Hello,” she said warily, wondering if he was on the pull. A tiny part of her hoped he was. She could only imagine what he’d be in for if the Oncoming Storm came back and caught him at it.

“I’m Teddy,” he said, extending a hand for her to shake. 

“I’m here with someone,” Rose said, shaking briefly. 

“Yeah, I saw him,” Teddy said, sliding into the Doctor’s vacated chair. “You’re Rose Tyler, right?”

Rose stilled. “How d’you know that?”

He grinned charmingly. “I looked you up. You’re very interesting.”

“Not that interesting,” Rose said flatly. “Look—”

“Oh, I think you are. You appeared for the first time, what, three years ago? The records say you’re Peter Tyler and Jacqueline Prentice’s daughter from before they were married. Given up for adoption because of their financial situation. And that the three of you only found each other again three years ago.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But the records are false, aren’t they?”

Rose felt goosebumps rise on her arms. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“And then, Pete Tyler takes over at Torchwood, and you become the leader of a project to design a device that can punch holes in reality,” Teddy continued. “And you succeeded, too, didn’t you? That’s very impressive. The stars were going out in our universe and you did — well, you did something and many of them came back.” He smiled his charming smile again. “That makes you extremely interesting in my book.”

“Nice story,” Rose said, crossing her arms. “Bit fantastic. What are you, a reporter?” 

“A reporter? Who would I report to? No. But I guess you could say I’m doing a bit of investigating.”

“Well, you can investigate someone else, mate,” Rose said firmly, “because my work is classified and I’m not interested in bein’ on the society pages.” Her eyes turned icy. “I think you’d better go.”

~*~

The Doctor came back into the bar feeling more disconcerted than ever. The readings from Malcolm’s device weren’t very specific, but he could read between the lines, as it were. Something had been here giving off very high levels of artron energy — time energy. And if he didn’t know better, he’d have said the readings looked very like those given off by a TARDIS.

Had his better half found a way through again? Had he changed his mind and come to take Rose back with him?

Given the opportunity, he thought he knew which one of them she would choose.

“Want another, luv?” the bartender asked, giving him a big smile. “Haven’t got any more bananas, but—”

“Here,” the Doctor said, extracting another banana from his pocket. 

The bartender laughed. “How many more of those have you got in there?”

But the Doctor wasn’t really paying attention to her. He’d spotted Rose at their table, and she was chatting with some bloke.

The Doctor recognized the feeling of jealousy pretty readily. That wasn’t new to this body. In fact, his ninth form had been rather prone to it — especially when it came to Rose. But it had been a while since he’d felt the overwhelming urge to punch someone in the face just for talking to her. He tried to take a few steadying breaths, but found it didn’t really help.

It wasn’t just jealousy he was feeling though, he realized. There was something else. That same familiar itch he’d felt earlier. What was it? He scrubbed his hands through his hair, as though trying to erase the fuzzy feeling that had come over him. 

“Here ya go, luv,” the bartender said, passing him his drink. He tossed it back in a few swallows. 

The bloke was standing up to leave. At least Rose wasn’t smiling at him. Actually, she looked rather angry. And — no one but him would’ve been able to see it, but she looked a little scared.

He was about to go find out exactly what anyone could say to frighten his Rose and make sure he never said it again, when suddenly, it hit him. That itch. That feeling. No. It couldn’t be. 

“Good?” the bartender asked, amused.

“Probably not,” the Doctor answered, striding off across the room.

"Rose," the Doctor said, his voice low. "Are you alright? That man you were talking to — who was he?"

She frowned. “Said his name was Teddy. He… knew things. About me, and Mum and Dad. I think he’s a reporter.”

"He's a Time Lord."

Rose's eyes widened. "What, really? That explains the hat, actually."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "I think you're missing the bigger picture."

"Right. Right!" She looked around for the young man again, but he was gone. 

“Come on!” the Doctor urged. Rose dumped some money on the table — enough for a significant tip for the much maligned waitress and the flirty bartender — and ran after the Doctor, out of the bar around the front and into the alley on the side. But there was no sign of Teddy.

“OK, so apart from the questionable fashion sense, how can you tell he’s a — you know?” Rose asked, panting a little.

“It’s been bothering me since we walked in, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it,” the Doctor said. He tapped his temple. “Time Lords — we can sense each other. Genetic telepathic link. But — different universe, it’s not quite the same…”

“I never really thought about it,” Rose said, “but I guess it makes sense that there could be Time Lords here. Wait — does that mean there could be another you around somewhere as well?”

The Doctor didn’t seem to be paying attention. “I assumed the Time War happened here, too,” he said vaguely, “but if there are other Time Lords — other survivors — either it didn’t happen, or it didn’t end the way…” He pulled out the artron detector again, waving it around the alley.

“Should we go after him?” Rose asked. 

The Doctor’s shoulders slumped. “No,” he said flatly. “He’s gone. And we can’t follow.”

~*~

The car ride back to the Tyler estate was long and silent. No more snuggling in the back seat. No more flirty banter. The Doctor seemed to have forgotten about “yowza” and was instead staring out the window as London passed them by.

As they got out of the car and made their way up the gravel drive towards the carriage house, he stumbled, and she reached out to steady him.

“You’re drunk,” she said, amused.

“Am not. Time Lords can’t get drunk. Our metabolism s’too efficient. Tried once on a seedy space station in the 51st century. Jack suggested it, actually. Spent 200 credits on a bottle of hyper vodka with a pan-galactic gargle blaster chaser and only got a buzz off it.”

He stumbled again, and Rose ducked under his arm to steady him. “Felt a bit like this, actually.”

He leaned heavily against her as she fished in her purse for the keys and unlocked the door, then led him down the short hall to the bedrooms. He stared blankly at the doorknob to his room for a while.

“Alright?” she asked, starting to get a little worried.

“Th’ door s’not working.” 

She sighed and opened the door, pushing him towards the bed. “It’s not automatic, you git.”

He flopped cooperatively, face-first, onto the duvet. Perching on the edge of the bed, she reached to pull the trainer off his closest foot. 

“‘M not the last,” he said, muffled, into the pillow. She picked at his laces, not knowing how to respond. “There’s other Time Lords.”

“That’s good. Isn’t it?” She pulled the shoe off and he rolled over to face her.

“I dunno,” he said, and the raw honesty in his face shook her. She wanted to kiss him. So instead she stood up.

“Rose,” he said, catching her hand, and she bit her lip, hard, before turning back. “Stay with me.” 

How often had she wished he’d say those words? How many nights on the TARDIS had they said goodnight, and she’d waited just that extra beat, wondering… 

There was that dark, hungry look in his eyes. And no small amount of uncertainty.

But there was also the glaze of alcohol. What if she stayed and he regretted it in the morning? Could she face that possibility?

She bent down towards his face. His eyes closed, face tilted up towards hers in anticipation. She kissed him gently, tenderly, lovingly on the forehead, the way he’d done to her so many, many times before. 

“Get some rest,” she said gently. “I’m right next door if you need me.”

He sighed and collapsed back against the pillow, not opening his eyes again. She turned and hurried out the door before she could change her mind.


	4. In which there is smoke and fire.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stared out the window, feeling like all her best plans and intentions were going up in—
> 
> “Smoke.”
> 
> “What?”
> 
> “Smoke!” She stood up straight, staring out the window. “Oh my god, that’s smoke!”
> 
> “What?”
> 
> “Doctor! Your shed’s on fire!”
> 
> “ _What?!_ ”

“ROOOOSE!” the Doctor groaned from the other room. “I think I’ve been poisoned!”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s called a hangover. Get out here, I’ve got something that will help.”

A few moments later, he came stumbling out of the bedroom, wrapped in the duvet, shuffling in his bare feet, and Rose had to catch her breath. It wasn’t that he looked so attractive with his wild bed hair and stubble across his chin (although, who was she trying to kid?) but without the suit and the perfect coif, stumbling out of bed with a hangover, looking miserably contrite, he just seemed so…

There was no other word for it: domestic.

She passed him a strong cup of tea and he grunted in thanks as he perched on one of the tall stools at the kitchen counter and she tried not to laugh. She pushed a plate across to him and nursed her own cup of tea.

“What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

“Proper English breakfast. Best hangover cure there is.”

“Honestly, Rose, I don’t think sausages are going to help. I’m fairly sure my really impressive brain is going to start leaking out my ears at any moment.”

“Well, I’ve got bananas if you’d rather—”

He pulled a face. “I never thought I’d say this, but I really don’t want a banana right now.”

She smirked and sipped her tea while he prodded at the sausages and tomatoes with his fork. Finally, he stabbed one and took a bite. She watched his look of suspicion dissolve into one of pleasure. He finished the sausage and picked up the fried bread, poking it at the runny egg yolk.

“This is brilliant,” he groaned. “Makes no sense, of course. Well, I say no sense. I suppose the excess fat coats the stomach and the electrolytes help with the dehydration and lost salts….”

Rose toyed with her cup, listening to him ramble, wondering if she should bring up what had happened the night before, wondering if he even remembered it. He’d asked her to stay, but what had he meant? Stay, as in, come lie next to me so I don’t feel so alone or… 

Her stomach twisted uncomfortably. He’d asked her to stay when he was feeling alone and vulnerable and she’d turned him down. If he did remember it, she had probably just ruined any chance she had at convincing him to take their relationship any further.

She stared out the window, feeling like all her best plans and intentions were going up in—

“Smoke.”

“What?”

“Smoke!” She stood up straight, staring out the window. “Oh my god, that’s smoke!”

“What?”

“Doctor! Your shed’s on fire!”

“ _What?!_ ”

He bolted from his seat, shedding the duvet as he went and pelting for the door in his undershirt and striped pajama bottoms. Rose dashed after him, snatching her phone off the counter as she ran. She gasped as her bare feet hit the frost-tipped grass, but she barely had time to register the cold as she watched the Doctor race toward the burning shed.

“NO!” she yelled, but he didn’t listen. He grasped for the door, obviously burned himself, then kicked it open with his bare feet. “DOCTOR!” she shrieked as he plunged into the fire.

She didn’t know what to do. Should she go in after him? Should she go to the big house for help? 

Suddenly, a keening scream filled the air, so powerful it knocked Rose to her knees, her hands flying to her head. “DOCTOR!” she screamed, but it wasn’t him screaming, was it? Was it her? She shook her head. Was she even hearing it? 

He burst out of the shed then, clutching something in his hands, black smoke billowing out behind him. He ran the distance between them and tumbled onto the grass in front of her, coughing and sputtering. “Rose…” he wheezed.

“Are you alright?” Her hands flew to his face, his shoulders. She grimaced with horror as her fingers found a singed spot in his tee shirt on his back and he winced. “Oh my god, you need to go to hospital,” she said, grabbing for her phone where she’d dropped it on the frosty grass.

“Can’t,” he gasped.

“What? Why not?” 

He winced and coughed painfully. “Half Time Lord!” he grunted. “But not the useful half, at the moment. Where’s a respiratory bypass when you need one?!”

She shook her head uncertain about what he was saying and heard her mother shrieking her name as she came running out of the big house. 

“It’s alright!” she said, looking up to see her mom rushing across the grass in her dressing gown with Tony bouncing, wide-eyed, on her hip. Pete was not far behind, already talking on the phone.

“No!” Rose said, “We can’t—”

“He needs an ambulance!” Jackie was yelling. “My god, what did you do, run in there? What the hell for?”

It was a good question, but not the most pressing at the moment, Rose thought. 

“I called 999,” Pete said. “They’re sending a fire truck and an ambulance.”

She grasped the Doctor by his shoulders. “What do you want to do?”

He shook his head. “I can’t go to hospital. If they want a sample of my blood or want to do any scans—”

“I thought — only one heart?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure what else is different!”

“He needs medical attention!” Jackie insisted loudly.

“Torchwood,” Pete said. They all looked up at him. “Everyone there is under binding confidentiality clauses. Plus they deal with weirder things than you every day before breakfast.”

Rose looked at the Doctor searchingly. He hesitated. “I won’t let ‘em dissect you,” she said, trying for levity. “They’d have to go through me first.”

He smiled weakly, then nodded.

A siren started up faintly in the distance. 

“You’d better go if you’re going,” Pete said, reaching out to help the Doctor to his feet. “The EMP won’t want you to leave without examining you.”

“My car,” Rose said, ducking under the Doctor’s arm. He coughed again and she felt it rack his entire body. She put her hand on his chest to steady him, feeling his single heartbeat pounding, and gave him a worried look. He just nodded toward the car. 

~*~

“Come on, now,” Teddy cajoled, flipping switches on the console. “What’s the problem?”

The TARDIS was acting strangely, as though she didn’t want to land. He’d double checked the coordinates to be sure he wasn’t going back on his own timeline, but she just seemed… reluctant. 

But he needed to go back. He needed to know more about Rose Tyler and her mysterious companion. 

Nervously, he pulled a lever and toggled some more switches. If she wouldn’t land on her own, he’d have to force her. 

The control room shuddered and jolted, throwing him backwards hard onto the floor. The TARDIS groaned, but he could see from the monitor that they had landed.

“Well,” he said, rubbing his bum as he climbed back to his feet. “That’s never happened before.”

~*~

Rose had been driving silently for a while, for which he was grateful at first. He was concentrating his efforts on analyzing what was going on in his body, trying to mitigate the effects of the smoke and the flames.

He didn’t want to admit it, but part of him had forgotten that this body was so much more vulnerable than he was used to. His Time Lord physiology would have cleared the smoke from his lungs within minutes, and the increased cellular regeneration would have dealt with the burns within a couple of hours. 

But his control was so much less with this heavy dose of human DNA. No respiratory bypass. No way to jumpstart his cellular regeneration. He’d have to get used to healing like a human. 

He grimaced at the thought.

“Does it hurt?” Rose asked, concern obvious in her voice.

“Not much,” he lied.

Instead of parking and going in the main entrance, Rose pulled round the side of the complex where a portico jutted out, much like the emergency entrance of a hospital. 

“Rose, wait,” he said suddenly. “I forgot — we can’t go in there.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because I still have this.” He opened his hands and showed her the tiny thing he’d been cradling the entire ride, the thing he’d gone and damaged this ridiculously fragile body to rescue from the burning shed. 

“What is it?” she asked softly.

“The TARDIS,” he replied. She looked up at his face with a worried expression. Was she searching for madness? Mirth? “A tiny piece of her,” he corrected. “I told you TARDISes were grown, not made. Donna gave it to me… And I won’t risk letting Torchwood get their hands on it. I don’t care if you dad is running the place.”

She opened her mouth to say something, then looked up, past him. “Someone’s coming!”

Reaching past him into the back seat, she pulled out a black duffle bag and yanked open the zip. She reached for the coral with a questioning look, and reluctantly he handed it to her. “Oh,” she said softly as her hands closed around it. “It feels like her…”

The Doctor looked up at her sharply, but before he could say anything there was a muffled voice behind him.

“Agent Tyler?”

Rose shoved the coral into the bag, and fumbled with the buttons to roll down the window. A man in pale blue scrubs was peering into the car. “Er, Williams, right?” 

“Do you need some help?”

“Yeah. There was a fire at the house and my friend suffered some burns.”

“I’ll get a wheelchair.”

 

“I don’t need a wheelchair!” the Doctor protested. 

Rose gave him a look. “Are there burns on your feet?”

The Doctor scowled at her. “Yes.”

“I’ll get a wheelchair,” Williams agreed, jogging back to the building. 

“I’ll lock this in my gym locker,” Rose said quietly, “and we can fetch it as soon as you’re sorted, alright?”

He nodded. “I’m perfectly able to walk.”

“You were perfectly able to walk into a burning shed, so I’m more questioning your sanity than your ability to walk at the moment,” she said sharply. She glanced down at the bag. “Was that her, screaming?” 

The Doctor’s eyes widened. “You heard?”

At that moment, Williams returned with the wheelchair. Rose hopped out of the car and rushed around to his side to help him out. 

“Why didn’t you call 999?” Williams asked. “It’s a bit of a drive—”

“That’s confidential, I’m afraid,” Rose said, and the Doctor was struck by how much she sounded like someone in charge. 

~*~

“Is Dr. Norris here?” Rose asked as the nurse wheeled the Doctor into one of the small exam rooms.

“In Africa,” a voice said from behind her, “being disgustingly noble or some shite like that. So you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.” 

A young man with a round face and a smug expression came into the room and offered his hand to the Doctor. “Dr. Harper,” he said by way of introduction. 

“Doctor James Noble.” The Doctor held up his right hand to display the angry red burns across his palm where he’d grabbed the doorknob of the shed.

“Right,” Dr. Harper said with a frown. “Hop up on the table if you can. Williams, we’re going to need some of that burn salve and dressings.” The nurse nodded and headed out to fetch the supplies. “So, what happened?”

“My shed caught fire,” the Doctor said before Rose could even open her mouth. 

She smiled slightly. “Your shed?”

“I took it over,” he said with a shrug. “Possession is nine tenths and all that.”

“And you were inside when it happened?” Dr. Harper asked. He was fiddling with the oxygen output that was built into the wall.

“Not exactly,” the Doctor said. “Had to rescue my… experiment.” 

Dr. Harper raised an eyebrow as he passed an oxygen mask over the Doctor’s face. “What kind of experiment was worth running into a burning shed? Just breathe normally,” he said. The Doctor made a face at Rose.

“The Doctor’s going to be joining the R&D department,” Rose said, skirting the question. 

“Bully for him,” Dr. Harper replied. “Wasn’t aware we had a satellite office in the Tylers’ shed, though.”

Rose saw the Doctor’s eyes narrow, but luckily, the nurse returned at that moment with a tray laden with bandages and a big jar. 

“Well, whatever the reasons, you got off pretty lucky,” Dr. Harper said. “Most of these are only first degree burns, and this stuff is fuckin’ amazing at healing — hey!”

The Doctor had dipped a non-burned finger into the jar of salve and then lifted the oxygen mask and stuck it into his mouth. He made a face at the taste and said, “Sontaran?”

“That’s right,” Dr. Harper said, looking disgusted. He tugged the mask back down over the Doctor’s face. “We made a trade with some Andromedans a few months ago that included medical supplies. Bloody amazing stuff. Cuts the healing time down to a few days.” He looked the Doctor over and nodded. “Right, Williams, let’s cut his shirt and trousers off. You’ve got a few burns on your back and legs that need attending.”

Before the Doctor could protest, nurse Williams had cut straight up the back of his tee shirt with a pair of sheers and pulled it away. She averted her eyes, feeling a blush rise to her cheeks. Feeling like an idiot for reacting like that when he was getting medical attention for god’s sake, she said overly loudly, “Nothing life-threatening, then?”

“Nah,” Dr. Harper said, starting to apply the Sontaran goop. The Doctor hissed as it made contact with the burn on his hand. “Infection’s the biggest risk with burns like this, but like I said, this stuff is practically magic.”

Rose nodded. “I think I’ll go down to the gym and find some proper clothes, then,” Rose said, making eye contact with the Doctor. “You going to be alright?”

“You know me,” he said, voice muffled by the mask. “I’m always alright.”


	5. In which there is innuendo, an awkward introduction, and a discussion of pants.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“My shed burned down, and I’m not in a very forgiving mood. That was your warning. You only get one.”_

“So. Go on then. What’s she like?” Dr. Harper asked as he finished with the last of the Doctor’s bandages.

“Who?”

“Miz Tyler. I bet she’s a tiger in the sack. All that pent-up anger. Daddy issues, I reckon.”

“What?”

“Well, be fair. You both come in here in your jammies after a fire at the Tyler estate, where you have apparently commandeered a shed. Are you going to tell me you’re not shaggin’ her?”

The Doctor’s expression went cold. “You want to be very careful — very, very careful — what you say about Rose. To me, or to anyone else. My shed burned down, and I’m not in a very forgiving mood. That was your warning. You only get one.”

Dr. Harper’s eyes narrowed and he looked as though he were trying to decide if he were really being threatened, when there was a sound of someone clearing his throat from the door. 

“Ianto Jones!” the Doctor crowed, suddenly cheerful again. 

“How are you feeling, sir?”

“Dandy,” the Doctor replied, holding up his expertly bandaged hand. “Handy dandy. I’m very attached to this hand, you know. It’s my life, if you believe it.”

Ianto blinked and looked at Dr. Harper. “Is he on drugs?”

“No, I think this is his normal state.”

“Er, okay. Ms. Tyler sent me. She’s been detained.”

“Everything alright?” the Doctor asked.

“Just a report that needed her attention. She suggested I show you your new lab.” 

“I’ve got a new lab? Wizard!” the Doctor exclaimed, jumping down off the exam table in nothing but his underwear and various bandages. “Nice work, Dr. Harper,” he said, bouncing gently on the balls of his feet. “Quite comfortable, although I don’t think I’ll be running any marathons anytime soon. Ran the Boston marathon once. Well, not as an official participant exactly. But then, neither was the creature chasing me. Blimey, the humidity…”

“I’ll just let you get dressed,” Ianto said.

“Right. About that…”

~*~

Teddy stepped out of his TARDIS to quite a scene. Emergency vehicles with their flashing lights were everywhere, though most of the firefighters and police officers didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. What appeared to be a satellite television truck was blocking the lane, and a reporter was speaking into a camera about the fire at the Tyler home.

Rose had thought he was a reporter…

He grinned to himself and walked directly up to the officer clearly guarding the Tylers’ driveway. 

“That’s far enough, sir. This is an active investigation.”

“I’m with the Times Tribune, er, dot com,” Teddy said, pulling out his little notebook and a pen. “Is there an official statement about what happened here?”

The officer squinted at him. “Authorities responded to a small structure fire at the home of Peter and Jacqueline Tyler. No injuries, but the structure was destroyed.” 

“Structure?”

“Some sort of shed, I guess.”

“That’s an awful lot of fuss for a shed,” Teddy observed. The officer shrugged.

“Guess it pays to be Pete Tyler.”

“Right,” Teddy said, casting an appreciative eye over the house. “Beats my flat any day.”

“That’s the truth, an all.”

“Have they figure out what caused it?” The officer frowned. Clearly not part of the official statement. Teddy put on his most charming smile. “Off the record?”

The man shrugged again. “They haven’t figured it out yet. Definitely not the wiring, looks like it was deliberately set. But no sign of any accelerant — you know, petrol or whatever.” He reached up to scratch his head. “And that ain’t all. Apparently Tyler won’t say what was in the shed. Bit suspicious if you ask me. Probably Torchwood shite.”

“That would explain the radiation, I suppose,” Teddy said absently, absorbed in his notebook.

“Radiation?”

Teddy looked up, surprised. “What? Oh, nothing. Ta for your help, mate.”

~*~

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Rose said, frowning at the report on her tablet. 

“That’s why we brought it to you,” Jake said with a grin. “You’re our resident, ‘doesn’t make a lick of sense’ department.”

“What does Malcolm say about it?”

“‘This doesn’t make any sense.’”

“Thanks, Jake. You’re a real help.”

He laughed. “He said the radiation signature isn’t right to be an actual tear through to the void — or, at least as far as he can guess. Plus it’s moving. He monitored the opening you came through at Bad Wolf Bay, so they’ve got data to compare to now.”

Rose nodded, stiffly. She didn’t want to admit — even to herself — that for a moment, one tiny moment, she’d hoped it was the TARDIS coming back through.

“How’s that going, by the way?”

“Fine! Good. Fine.”

“Which one is it?”

Rose sighed. “He’s decided to come work at Torchwood.”

“Well, that’s something!”

“At least, I think he’s going to work for Torchwood.” She frowned. “He asked for a lab, but we didn’t really talk about the details….”

“Gosh,” Jake said, propping his boots up on the corner of his desk. “You and the Doctor not talking about something important? I’m shocked.”

She shoved his feet off her desk and he nearly fell out of his chair. “We’re getting ‘round to it!” she insisted. “He needs his space. Although, now his space has burned down, he’s not got anywhere to run off to.” She reached down self-consciously to reassure herself that her gym bag was still there. She hadn’t been able to leave the tiny piece of TARDIS coral in her locker, she’d been too afraid of losing it. Even now, she fancied she could almost hear her…. 

“Wait, _you_ didn’t set the shed on fire did you?” She rolled her eyes at him. “Good excuse as any for the two of you to finally communicate, then. Honestly, Tyler, if _I’m_ giving out relationship advice, it’s a bad sign.”

“Well, no time like the present,” Rose said, standing and scooping up her gym bag. “You go back and see if Malcolm can get a better fix on these readings and I’ll go talk to the Doctor. I’m resigning and promoting him to director of the doesn’t make sense department.”

~*~

Between Ianto and Dr. Harper, they found a pair of clean scrubs that more or less fit the Doctor’s lanky frame, but shoes were harder to come by. He insisted he didn’t mind and flat refused the offer of a wheelchair, and therefore ended up padding down the corridors of the Torchwood Institute in his expertly bandaged bare feet. 

He had a feeling Ianto disapproved. But he liked the lad anyway. 

Ianto led him down to the level where Malcolm's lab was located, and through an impressive set of double doors to a small but positively gleaming lab. A ginger woman with a clipboard looked as though she were taking inventory of the space, and the Doctor slid to a stop when he saw her. 

“Donna??”

“Yeah?” She turned around, a confused look on her face. “Hello. Sorry, have we met?”

“No,” he said, his heart clenching in his chest. “Er, sorry, no.” 

Ianto stepped forward smoothly. “Doctor, this is your new assistant. Director Tyler requested her especially for you.”

Donna gave him a look, but put her hand out to shake. “Donna Noble”

“Oh. Oh! Right! I'm the— Doctor. Doctor James, er, Noble.”

“Well!” she said brightly, “that's awkward. Dr. Noble, Donna Noble. How will people tell us apart?”

He grinned. “Mostly people just call me Doctor.”

“Is that why you’re wearing the scrubs?”

“What?” The Doctor looked down at the pale blue scrubs. “Oh, no. When I got here, I was still in my jimjams.” Donna raised an eyebrow at him. “There was a fire.” He held up his bandaged hand as proof. “We came here to get me patched up. I don’t plan on coming to work in my pajamas. Well. Not most days, anyway. Are there casual Fridays?”

Donna was staring at him. “So, are you completely mad, or just eccentric?”

He grinned happily. “Oh, mad. Completely.”

She smiled back. “Well. So long as we’ve got that cleared up. Is there anything I can assist you with right now?”

“Er… Well, I need some new suits,” he said hopefully, warming to the idea even as he said it. Jackie had been at him for weeks now to go shopping — but the thought of a crowded department store that didn’t automatically know his size and preferences the way the TARDIS had was more than a little depressing.

“Not a problem. I bet you ten quid Ianto has a tailor on speed dial,” Donna said, grabbing a notepad. Ianto frowned but didn’t dispute it. “What are you, about a 38 long and ridiculously skinny? What all do you need?”

The Doctor scrubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Oh, everything. Because of the — you know. Fire.”

“Okay. Suits, shirts, ties…”

“Yup,” he said, popping the p. “Socks. Undershirts. Pants.”

Donna looked up at him over her notepad with an icy stare.

“You do _not_ pay me enough to shop for your pants,” she said flatly.

The Doctor looked thoughtful. “Actually, I don’t pay you at all, do I?”

“My point.” 

“Right. Sorry.”

Donna’s expression lightened. “Ask your girlfriend to buy you some pants if you’re that shopping-phobic,” she suggested as she headed out of the lab to her desk. 

“Rose is not my girlfriend,” he said automatically. It was a reflex, born of many questions on many worlds, but he wondered if it was still true. Was Rose his girlfriend? It seemed an awfully trivial title for the place she occupied in his life.

Urgh, did that make him her _boyfriend?_

“If you want to make a list of any equipment or supplies you need, Donna can help you get it,” Ianto said, bringing him back to the lab.

“And some shoes!” the Doctor shouted in Donna’s general direction. “I think they’re called CHUCKS!”

“I don’t respond to SHOUTING!” Donna shouted back. 

“I think I’ll just leave you to it,” Ianto said, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

~*~

Rose wandered into the lab to find the Doctor lying on the floor under one of the lab benches, examining the wires and cords that ran neatly underneath. Or, _had_ run neatly underneath, at least before he’d started pulling them all out and mucking about with them. 

It reminded her of the many, many times she’d walked in to find his feet sticking out from under the console of the TARDIS. She hugged her gym bag a little closer. “Settling in?” she asked. 

“Rose!” he said happily, scooting out from underneath. “Been busy saving the world?” 

“Well, thinking about it, anyway,” she said, hopping up onto the lab bench. “There’s an awful lot of research involved in world saving when you’re not — well, you, I s’pose. In fact, I came down to ask you about something. I see you found something to wear?”

“Donna’s going to order me some new suits.” He paused. “Did you know she was—?”

Rose nodded. “After we realized she was at the center of the wrong timelines in your — our — in the other universe, we looked her up here, just in case. This Donna didn’t have anything to do with it, of course, because, well, you weren’t here, I suppose. Anyway, she was working as a temp, and I thought that’s rubbish, she’s amazing, and I recruited her.”

The Doctor smiled a little sadly. 

“Is it alright that she’s here?” Rose asked, sensing something was off. “It was Dad’s idea. He thought she might make you feel more at home.”

“‘S brilliant,” the Doctor said unconvincingly.

“Yeah,” Rose said with a nod. “He doesn’t really get how strange it is, seeing people you know so well who don’t know you at all.”

“It’s not that,” the Doctor said, leaning on the lab bench next to her. “Well, it is a bit, but it’s just….” He paused for a moment, looking far away. “She was my best mate.”

Rose reached for his hand, threading her fingers through his comfortingly. She felt the little tingle she always felt when they touched and felt something inside her relax. “Maybe she can be again?” she suggested.

He was staring down at their hands, intertwined together. “I’m not sure I deserve a second chance.”

Rose frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s gone, Rose.”

“What?”

“Donna. My Donna. She’s gone. Everything that made her, _her,_ everything we saw and did together — she doesn’t remember any of it. She’s back to thinking she’s nothing more than a temp in Chiswick again.”

“My god….” Rose breathed. “Why?”

“Because of me.” He looked so broken, so despondent. He dropped her hand and started pacing. “The metacrisis — a human brain couldn’t handle having a Time Lord consciousness shoved inside it. She created me and it destroyed her. She was burning up, even as we said goodbye.” He ran his hands through his hair, gripping it as though he were going to yank it out by the roots. “She’s gone, he’s alone and it’s all because of me — because I even exist!”

“Stop it,” Rose said, jumping down off the lab bench to face him, surprised and a little frightened by the outburst.

“Everything alright in here?” Donna asked, poking her head in. “Oh, hallo, Rose. I thought I heard himself shouting for me.”

“Hi Donna,” Rose said, turning to smile at her. “Yeah, we’re fine. 

“Well, the clothes have arrived, if you want them?”

“Send them in!” Rose said, hoping the distraction would help.

A man in an impeccable suit with a tape measure around his neck wheeled in a rolling garment rack with an array of suits in different colors. 

“Pick what you like and charge it to Torchwood,” Rose said, touching his arm. “Then we’ll go home and rest, yeah? Long day.”

“Wait,” he said, catching her hand in his. “What did you want to ask me about?”

“Oh, right.” She pulled a tablet out of the gym bag. “Malcolm detected a spike in void radiation this morning — and it looks like it was coming from near the house.”

The Doctor looked up in surprise. “Pete’s house?” 

Rose nodded. “None of us is sure what to make of it. Have a look and come find me when you’re done?” He nodded, but he was already flipping through the reports on the tablet. 

“I’ll take that,” Donna said, lifting it from him.

“Oi!”

“You can have it back when you’re done! This man didn’t come all the way over from Marks & Spencer to watch you read a report. Stand on the box now, Doctor,” she said, “and you’ll be done in a jiffy.”

Rose grinned. “Dad was right to put you two together.” She winked at the Doctor’s scowl and let herself out of the lab.

“I ordered you some casual clothes as well,” Donna said. “Hope that’s alright.” She pointed to a stack of jeans and tee shirts. He noticed a shoebox and a package of plain cotton underpants as well. 

“Fine,” he replied, feeling more than a bit out of sorts. It felt familiar, bantering with Donna, her ordering him around. Comfortable. Yet it shouldn’t. He wasn’t sure he deserved to feel comfortable.

“Ooooh, I like the navy,” Donna said flicking through the suits on the rack. “And this gray is nice, with the maroon pinstripe. Oh, what about brown? It’d look good with your eyes.”

“No brown,” the Doctor said so quickly that she looked up at him in surprise. “Everything else is fine. Thanks. Oh, and Donna?”

“Hmmm?”

“Can you get me a list of any unsolved arson cases in the greater London area? Since Rose first got here.”

“Arson?” She frowned. “Your fire wasn’t an accident?”

 _Clever Donna,_ he thought a little sadly. “Around me, very little turns out to be an accident,” he said out loud. “Is that something you can do?”

“Sure. It’s a little outside Torchwood’s normal jurisdiction, but I’m sure I can sweet talk someone into it.” She winked at him, and he tried not to sigh.


	6. In which there is a broken mug, a meeting of the minds, and an oscillating pulse tone generator.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re angry at me for wanting to get back to you?” she asked incredulously.
> 
> “Rose, listen—” 
> 
> “No, you listen. Be angry at me for how we did it, fine. You’re right; we didn’t understand the consequences. But our universe was falling apart and I couldn’t just sit around and let that happen. It had already happened to me personally, so I knew how devastating it would be.”
> 
> She took a deep breath, expecting him to argue, but he didn’t. “So, fine,” she continued, “be angry that we punched holes in the universe. Be angry that I made some mistakes on my way to find you. But don’t you dare be angry with me that I wanted to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little angsty, but you'll be rewarded with some fluff by the end. ;)

Before Rose even shut the front door, the Doctor immediately started fussing with the assortment of _stuff_ he’d brought home from Torchwood. A large glass terrarium, a jar of some kind of chemicals, a grow-light he was currently taking apart on the kitchen counter. He pulled the chunk of coral from her gym bag and placed it gently in the bottom of the tank.

“Will she be alright?” Rose asked, leaning on the counter next to him. 

“Oh yes. Luckily, she wasn’t damaged by the fire. I’ve been working on putting together a sort of incubator that should increase her natural growth cycles 59 fold.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing all this time — when you were muckin’ about in the shed?”

“That’s right.”

Rose crossed her arms, feeling her anger welling up. “You could’ve just _told_ me,” she said, hearing the bitterness in her own voice. “Unless you were planning on swanin’ off without me, or somethin’.”

He looked up at last. “Is that what you think?” 

“I don’t know what to think!” she exclaimed. “I don’t understand why you’ve been so secretive about the whole thing. You could’ve just been honest about what you were doin’.”

She expected him to deny it, but she hadn’t expected the angry clench of his jaw and darkening of his eyes.

“What about you? You haven’t been strictly honest with me, either,” he said.

Rose blinked back her surprise. “When have I not been honest with you?!” 

“How many jumps did you make, Rose?”

She blinked. “What?”

He stepped closer to her until they were only inches apart and she had to look up to see his face. “How many jumps across the void before you found me?” he asked with a deadly sort of calm.

“One hundred and eight,” she said without flinching.

He turned away from her, putting both hands on the counter and leaning heavily.

“One hundred and eight jumps until I found the right universe,” she continued. “Then half a dozen or so to figure out what was wrong with it and help Donna fix it. And then one more.”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is??” he exploded, turning towards her. The anger and fear in his eyes scared her more than any shouting could. He picked up Malcolm's void radiation detector and shook it at her. “According to this you’re swimming in void radiation. More than I’ve ever seen on a person before!”

“I know.”

“You _know?!_ ”

She nodded. “Malcolm monitored every trip I took and the levels of radiation I absorbed.”

The Doctor was shaking his head, one hand yanking at his hair.

“You said — the first time we came here, you said your people used to travel between universes all the time.”

“With the full protection of a TARDIS!” he exclaimed. “Not jumping through the void without so much as a wet suit. Why would you _do_ such a thing?”

She scowled at him. “You _know_ why.” He scoffed. “You’re angry at me for wanting to get back to you?” she asked incredulously.

“Rose, listen—” 

“No, you listen. Be angry at me for how we did it, fine. You’re right; we didn’t understand the consequences. But our universe was falling apart and I couldn’t just sit around and let that happen. It had already happened to me personally, so I knew how devastating it would be.”

She took a deep breath, expecting him to argue, but he didn’t. “So, fine,” she continued, “be angry that we punched holes in the universe. Be angry that I made some mistakes on my way to find you. But don’t you dare be angry with me that I wanted to.”

He wasn’t saying anything. He wasn’t even looking at her. 

A surge of anger boiled through her. “You know, for a Time Lord, you have a pretty dim view of what forever means,” she spat.

In a motion so fast she almost didn’t see it, he picked up a mug and hurled it across the room where it shattered spectacularly against the wall. Rose gasped and took a step back.

“I know _exactly_ how long forever is,” he growled, turning on her. “Piteously short for humans in general and you’ve gone and shortened it even more. That radiation is eating away at your DNA at a molecular level. You’re _dying!_ ”

Rose felt her heart stammer in her chest, and she put a hand out to the counter to steady herself. A wave of memories crashed over her, of Malcolm and Dr. Norris telling her they were concerned about the radiation levels. _We don’t know what it’s doing to you. It doesn’t matter. What choice do we have? Just… Don’t tell Pete, OK?_

“I can’t lose you again.”

She looked up. The Doctor was standing next to her. He looked so lost. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to tell him it was OK, it would be OK. But she couldn’t.

She felt his arms around her, and she leaned into him, desperate to be held. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and he pulled her into a proper hug at last. 

“I’ll fix it,” he was saying. His anger seemed to have passed. “I’ll find a way. There has to be a way. I’m sure there’s something that can counteract the radiation — or absorb it! If not on this planet, then on another one. I’ll flag down a Time Agent and steal one of those stupid bracelets if I have to and—”

“Shut up,” she said quietly, mostly into his shirt.

“I — what?” 

“Shut up,” she repeated. “S’not your fault. No–” she stopped him as he opened his mouth. “It’s not. An’ I believe you. We’ll figure it out. Just…. Shut up and tell me it was worth it, okay?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and she felt her stomach drop with uncertainty. God, _was it_ worth it if he didn’t feel the same way? Was she dying for a man who could never love her the way she wanted him to?

Then he tipped her chin up. She caught a glimpse of his face crossed with some indescribable emotion before he kissed her.

~*~

They ended up in her room, sitting against the headboard of her bed, she curled against him, fitting perfectly in the crook of his arm, head against his shoulder. And they talked. Really and truly, for the first time in… Years. More for him than for her. It felt like a lifetime. 

He told her a few stories about Donna when she asked, and about Martha. She told him how she’d bullied Pete and the scientists at Torchwood into starting the dimension cannon. How frantic they’d all become when the stars started going out. How she’d insisted on being the one to cross. It all came spilling out of her once she got going.

“How did you know when you had the right one?” he asked when a pause stretched out into silence. 

She got up from the bed and pulled a little metal box out of her wardrobe. “They built me this,” she said, handing it to him. “You slot the TARDIS key in here, and it works kind of like a homing beacon. Beeps faster the closer I get to the TARDIS. But once I got to the right one, I didn’t need it.” 

“Why not?” he asked, turning the device over in his hands, impressed at the primitive ingenuity. 

“Because the second I got there, I could feel her,” Rose said quietly. “I knew I was home.” 

Slowly he put the little box down on the bed and sat up straighter, his heart pounding, demanding confirmation. “At Torchwood, when you touched the coral: you said you could feel her.” Rose nodded. “You have a telepathic link with the TARDIS. You never let on.”

“I didn’t know until it was gone!” she insisted. She was toying with the hem of her hoodie. “But I think you suspected, didn’t you? You suspected I could hear her — or, you. Otherwise, how could I have figured out how to get all the way to bloody Norway to see you?”

“Not so much suspected as hoped,” he admitted. He didn’t like to think of those days. The desperate weeks, months he’d spent spinning through the void, pushing himself to exhaustion trying to figure out how to get her back. Realizing that an image was the best he could do. A ghost.

She sighed. “You really want to go tit for tat on this whole honesty thing? ‘Cos you’ve got about 900 years worth of stuff you haven’t told me.” 

He smiled a little sadly. She wasn’t wrong. “And yet, you keep coming back to me.”

“‘Course I do. I love you.”

She said it so easily, so plainly it took his breath away. It wasn’t a grand declaration, a terrifying admission, it was simple truth.

Rose loved him. It settled inside him with a weight he wasn’t expecting. How could he have ever been glib about such a thing?

“What does it mean?” she asked, sitting down on the bed again. He wanted to beckon her back over to sit with him, wanted her in his arms again, wanted…. But he’d always known he was a coward. He leaned back on the headboard again, trying for a casual, relaxed air and utterly failing, he felt.

“Well, the TARDIS gets inside your head — at a very low level anyway. That much you knew.”

She wrinkled her brows. “Does that mean Sarah Jane and — and the others, they had a connection to the TARDIS too?”

“No. I’ve never seen a human develop a psychic link like this before.” 

“Is it bad?”

_Bad?_ he thought. _How could it be bad compared to the radiation that’s devouring you even as we sit here having a chat?_ “I don’t think so,” he said aloud. Then, “How much do you remember about the Game Station?”

Rose sucked in a little breath. “Not much,” she admitted. “We opened the TARDIS, and she helped me get back to you….” she frowned. “The details are a bit fuzzy.”

“That’s probably when it happened,” he said quickly, not wanting to invite too many more questions about that time. “You bonded with her in a way that no one was ever meant to.”

Rose seemed to consider that. “What about you?” she asked. “You communicate with her — don’t you?”

“I’m a touch telepath,” he said, as though that explained everything. She shook her head, encouraging him to go on. “Time Lords were — are — I’m a level two telepath, which means I need to be making contact for it to work well and properly. The TARDIS itself is a powerful psychic presence, so yeah. We communicate. In a way.”

Rose grinned, the tip of her tongue sticking out through her teeth and he felt himself melt. Just a bit. That was his smile — the one she reserved just for him. He’d missed it so much.

“ _That’s_ why you’re always stroking bits of the TARDIS,” she said teasingly. “ _Communicating_.”

He sniffed, trying to appear superior, but broke out into a grin almost immediately.

Suddenly, Rose’s grin faltered. “Hang on,” she said, arms crossing in a stance that was eerily reminiscent of Jackie. “Is that why you’ve always been so—” she flapped her hands at him, “handsy?”

“Handsy!” he repeated, affronted.

“Always touchin’ and holdin’ hands. Are you readin’ my mind?”

Warning bells were going off in his head and mauve flashing lights. Her accent always got thicker when she was annoyed.

“No! Well, a bit. Not exactly.” Her expression was not encouraging. “I wasn’t reading your mind!” he said quickly. “You’d know if I was trying to — you’d be able to tell,” he said, realizing that wasn’t perhaps as reassuring as he’d hoped. “I just…” he struggled for the words. _Honest, she’d said._ “I was lonely,” he blurted out. 

She didn’t hesitate. She scooted back across the bed and wrapped both her arms around his one, threading her fingers through his, and — there. He could feel her. Just that little bit, that hum of another presence in his mind. And he wasn’t so alone.

It wasn’t the same. Humans didn’t feel like Time Lords. But he'd grabbed her hand in the dark in that department store, it felt like long ago now, and suddenly he hadn’t felt so alone. And he’d liked her — more than liked her, if he were being honest — and she was warm and kind and brilliant and it had felt good. 

And, well, at the time, he hadn’t been certain he’d ever feel good again.

“I don’t understand,” she said gently, bringing him back. 

“I could show you?” he said, and she nodded. 

They manouvered around until they were sitting cross-legged, facing one another. He held his hands up to either side of her head, fingertips brushing her temples. She was watching him with such intensity, such trust. She couldn’t know how intimate this was for him. Touching another’s mind wasn’t something to be done lightly; only in times of great need or... 

She couldn’t know how many times he’d pictured this moment, wondered what it would be like. 

Of course, he hadn’t exactly pictured them sitting on a flowered duvet in Jackie and Pete Tyler’s guest house in a parallel universe…. But it would do.

“What do I do?” she whispered.

“Just close your eyes.”

He watched her dark lashes flutter shut. And gently, very gently, he opened up to her. Just a bit.

“Oh,” she breathed, and his heart clenched, desire flooding through him. This might be harder than he’d thought — he’d forgotten about all his new _limitations._

“Can you feel me?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah.” She started to smile. “Yes. It’s like…. It’s like you’re all around me. I can’t see you but — it’s better than seeing, it’s—” She frowned a little, then gave a little laugh. “I don’t have the words.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, knowing exactly what she meant. He could feel her presence as well, more than he’d ever allowed himself before. It was intoxicating. 

“This is what you feel when we hold hands?”

“More or less.”

“Can I…. Could I learn to do it?” 

Again, he felt his chest clench, his heart rate speed up. If she could. If she could….

“Maybe.”

“Doctor?”

“Yeah?”

“Last night you asked me to stay with you.” 

A flood of strong emotions passed between them, and it surprised him so much he almost withdrew. He felt her longing, her desire, her guilt and confusion and uncertainty. He was such an idiot. He hadn’t realized how much such a request — an _admission_ — like that from him would mean to her.

“Would you stay with me?” she asked tentatively.

~*~

After he was certain that Rose was asleep, the Doctor slipped quietly out of her room. He let himself out of the carriage house and jogged across the lawn to Pete’s house, where he adroitly picked the lock. Once inside, he moved silently from room to room, nicking what he needed. He was slipping back through the shadows to the carriage house with an armload of bits and bobs inside 10 minutes.

It only took him a couple of hours to knock up a signal transmitter. It didn’t have to be fancy, after all. He took the cobbled-together mess of tubes and wires outside, pointed it to the stars, and flipped it on.

It wasn’t a message, really. Just an oscillating pulse tone on a frequency humans wouldn’t discover for another couple of centuries. He wondered if it would be enough. But he didn’t have long to wait to find out if it had worked.

He felt it more than heard it, a shift of atoms and spacetime. Turning around, he saw a large oak tree a few meters away where there hadn’t been one before. There was a subtle shift, and a door appeared in its trunk, a figure moving out into the starlight.

“I thought that might be you,” he said, striding forward. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Teddy.”

“I’m called the Doctor,” the Doctor said, “and I need your help.”


	7. In which there is a smock, a probe, and a sonic screwdriver.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can you do up the strings?” she whispered. “I can’t reach an I don’t want anything… hangin’ out.”
> 
> She turned away from him and he saw that the smock did up in the back with a series of ties, and it was hanging open—
> 
> —to reveal a large expanse of Rose’s naked skin.
> 
> He swallowed thickly. His mouth had suddenly gone dry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the extended delay in updating this. Life. And I have some travel coming up that may delay it once again, but fear not! There will be more goodies soon. I truly, TRULY appreciate the kudos and comments. They keep me motivated to write!

“Mornin’,” Rose yawned, plopping down onto the sofa next to him. He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She was all rumpled and soft around the edges. She’d literally punched holes in reality to find him. She’d endangered herself and others to be with him. And he couldn’t even find the resolve to be cross with her about it. Because she was Rose.

Without really even realising what he was doing, he gathered her into his arms and kissed her. He pressed his mouth against hers with fervor, lips coaxing, tongue exploring. At first she felt stiff, surprised, but she melted into him almost immediately, her hands finding their way up to the back of his neck, his hair — oh, but that felt so good. 

And he could feel her in his mind, as well, tugging at the edges of his consciousness.

Forget little purple dresses and high heels and fancy hair. This was the Rose he wanted. He pulled her closer, kissed her harder, until they were both out of breath.

“Morning,” he breathed as they finally broke apart.

“What was that for?” she asked, looking slightly dazed, but definitely pleased. Her cheeks were flushed, lips full from kissing.

“You’re just so beautiful,” he said quietly.

“For a human?” she smirked. 

The smile slid off his face. “No, no. Rose….” He took her hands into his. “I haven’t done this properly. I’ve mucked it all up from the start. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry for that. I was stupid because I thought I could never…. I thought I didn't deserve it."

He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “But this morning, when you came out all rumpled and smiling and smelling of sleep I thought…. I’ve seen beauty, you know. Beauty you can’t even imagine. I’ve shown you tiny glimpses of the awesome majesty of the universe, and it’s not even a fraction of what I’ve seen. I’ve seen beauty that would leave the finest poets of all time speechless. And none of it — none of it — compares to how beautiful you are to me right now.” 

She smiled and blushed, which pleased him. But then she said, "Of course you deserve it. Everyone deserves to be happy.”

She ducked her head, studying her hands. “I’m sorry if you thought...” She started wringing her hands together anxiously. “I wasn’t really trying to go after him, when the TARDIS left,” she said all in a rush. “I just — he didn’t say goodbye, and….” She sniffed.

The Doctor’s stomach knotted. “I know,” he said softly. “I don’t blame you. I knew I wasn’t the one you wanted—” Her head shot up, face frowning at him. “—but I thought, if I could get the TARDIS growing properly, our new TARDIS—”

She ran her hands over her face. "I thought you didn't want me — when you spent all that time out in the shed.”

“Didn’t want you?” he repeated, incredulously.

“Didn’t want to be here with me. I thought he'd pawned me off on you out of some sort of guilt and—" She stopped abruptly because he was there, then, his cool hands on her wrists, pulling her hands away from her face. 

“He thought he was giving you a gift. He wasn't abandoning you. He was giving you what he thought you wanted: a lifetime with him — or, as close as he could get.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“What do you want? Honestly, Doctor.”

He felt like his heart would break at the sound of uncertainty and longing in her voice. “Honestly?” he repeated. “I want you. I’ve only ever wanted you. And I will spend every day of the rest of my life proving it to you. If you'll let me.”

She stared at him, and it felt like she was looking right through him, looking into his soul. She reached up and gently caressed his face and he leaned into the touch.

“You thought having a new TARDIS would make me want to be with you?” she asked softly.

“Well,” he said slowly. “Make you feel more like…. More like I was—”

She cut him off with a kiss that sent shivers down his spine. When she finished, she leaned her forehead against his. “You daft, daft alien,” she said, her voice full of affection. 

Abruptly, the door to the carriage house flew open. “Morning!” Jackie chirped. “Oh for the love of — put a sock on the door like normal people!”

“Or, you could knock!” Rose snapped jumping up from the sofa. 

“Don’t shout at me, missus,” Jackie said, heading for the kitchen. “I’ve brought breakfast.”

The Doctor smiled a little vaguely. Not that long ago (relatively speaking), Jackie Tyler had set his teeth on edge. In fact, when he’d first met Rose, anything that even _smelled_ faintly domestic had sent him running. Because he was afraid of it, to be honest. Afraid of getting trapped by love and comfort and need. Afraid he didn’t deserve it.

Now? Well, it wasn’t as though Jackie would be his _first_ pick of breakfast companion, but he’d grown fond of her in her own way. He glanced over and noticed little Tony, lurking in the doorway.

“Wotcha, Tony,” he said with a grin.

“Hi,” Tony said back, shyly. “Were you talkin’ to a tree last night?”

The Doctor grinned. “Might’ve been.”

“What did you say?”

“I was asking for a favor. For your sister.”

Tony nodded sagely. “Did it answer back?”

“Tony!” Jackie called. “Come eat your breakfast. You too, Doctor. There’s banana nut for you.” 

The Doctor followed Tony over to the kitchen counter where he swiped a muffin, dipped a knife into the jam, and then licked it obscenely.

Jackie made a face and Rose shook her head, clearly amused.

“Sorry, Jackie, can't stay,” he said around a mouthful. “We have an appointment.” 

“We do?” Rose said, looking surprised.

“Yup. So eat up and get dressed. Thanks for the breakfast!” He waved his muffin, scattering crumbs everywhere as he headed for his room.

“So,” he heard Jackie say. “How’s things?”

~*~

Rose got rid of her mother as quickly as possible and threw on a pair of jeans, a black top, and her running shoes — uncertain what kind of appointment the Doctor had in mind, but keenly aware that it would almost certainly involve running.

When she came back out to the kitchen he was leaning on the counter, eating marmalade out of the jar with two fingers, feet splayed apart in his brand new pair of red Converse.

“Oh,” she said softly when she saw him.

“What?” he asked around a mouthful of jam.

“One of your new suits,” she said. It was grey with a maroon pinstripe, slim cut as always, and a maroon tee shirt with no tie. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise — suit, tee shirt, trainers were all pretty normal for him — but the shock of it not being blue or brown was a surprise to her.

“Time to go,” he said, grabbing her hand and leading her out the door. They passed her car and headed around the rear of the house to where the Tylers’ property backed to a bit of woods.

“So what’s this mysterious appointment?” Rose asked, swinging her arm and his between them. “Or was that just a clever ruse to get rid of my mum.”

“Clever, yes! Ruse, no. We’ve got a date with your friend Teddy.”

“Teddy? You mean the—”

Suddenly, a large oak tree appeared at the edge of the woods not ten feet from where they were standing. Rose blinked, her mouth hanging slightly open.

"Is that a…?"

"Yup," he replied with a pop.

"Why's it look like a tree?"

"Chameleon circuit. It changes to match the environment. Helps it blend in."

“That’s useful,” Rose said casually, enjoying the scowl that passed over his features. “Eight o’clock on the dot. Punctual, isn’t he?”

The Doctor turned, clearly about to make a very scathing remark when a door appeared on the tree’s trunk and swung open. 

“My Lord Doctor and the Lady Rose!” Teddy said with a grin, stepping out onto the lawn and doffing his fedora in a little bow. 

“No need to be so formal,” the Doctor said a bit stiffly. 

Teddy grinned as he strode toward them, offering his hand to Rose. “I didn’t properly introduce myself before, what with thinking you were just a normal human. Theodoriandum Xander Campbell of the House of Lungbarrow. Teddy, for short.”

“I should think so,” Rose giggled. “With a name like that.”

Teddy sighed, though he was still grinning broadly. “It’s my own cross to bear. I rather think my father was overcompensating. He had quite a boring name.”

“Any chance we could get on with it?” the Doctor asked a mite testitly. 

“Be nice,” Rose said through her teeth, bumping him with her shoulder. “Are you always this rude when you meet another Time Lord?”

 

“Invariably,” the Doctor grumbled. 

“Of course!” Teddy said, apparently oblivious to their mutterings. “Come in! Make yourselves at home.” 

“In there?” Rose said as Teddy held the door open for them expectantly. “What exactly are we doing?”

The Doctor reached out and took her hand and she turned to look at him. “I realized that if I’m going to figure out how to cure you, I need to know exactly what’s going on. And that means I need more sophisticated equipment than anything here on Earth. Oh, I could build it, of course, but first I’d have to build the tools I’d need to build it — and probably a few of the tools I’d need to build the tools — plus I’d have to find the raw materials and it’s like ol’ Mickey said: it always comes down to having the parts.”

“Doctor,” Rose cut in, glancing at Teddy, who was watching them with a grin.

“Right. Anyway. I realized you’d just met the one man who had all the equipment I needed. So I placed a call.”

Rose’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. The Doctor calling for help? Now that was a first.

“And I was more than happy to oblige,” Teddy put in. “Especially after he agreed to tell me the whole fascinating story of how the two of you got here.” He gestured again for them to enter, and the Doctor went through the little door, pulling Rose behind him. “You see?” Teddy said as she passed him. “I said you were interesting, Rose Tyler.”

Rose didn’t reply. She was too busy staring around at the TARDIS control room they’d just entered. She’d expected it to be bigger on the inside, of course, but she hadn’t been expecting anything like this.

The console in the center looked somewhat familiar, with the time rotor humming gently in the middle, and a million levers and buttons all around, but that’s about where the similarity ended. The room was bright white and cold metal. Very futuristic looking compared to the warmth of her TARDIS’ organic feel.

“It looks so different,” she said softly.

“Different theme,” the Doctor sniffed. “I don’t like it.”

“Look at all the… round things.”

“I do like the round things.”

“What are the round things?”

“No idea!”

“This way!” Teddy said brightly, leading them through a door at the back of the control room. It opened directly into a gleaming, equally futuristic-looking infirmary. Rose was aware that her TARDIS could move rooms around at will, so she assumed this one had put the infirmary so close for their benefit. She gave a little involuntary shiver at the cold sterility of the room. 

“Put this on, if you please,” Teddy said, handing her a silvery garment that looked like a doctor’s examination smock. “To help with the scans. There’s a loo right over there.”

Rose nodded and took the garment with her to the little cubicle. 

“Alright if I—?” the Doctor gestured at the instruments and Teddy nodded. 

“Be my guest.” The Doctor pulled his glasses out of his inside jacket pocket and started poking around. Teddy watched him for a moment before adding, “You will keep your side of the bargain, won’t you?”

“Hmmm?”

“To tell me how the two of you got here. Because you’re not from here, are you, Doctor?”

The Doctor glanced up over the top of his spectacles. “No. We’re not.”

“Rose brought you here from across the void. From another universe.”

“Strictly speaking,” the Doctor said, producing his Torchwood tablet from inside his jacket and plugging it in, “I brought her here. She’s not originally from here, either.”

“That explains a lot. She got left here, which is why she had the Torchwood people build a device to try to get her back.”

“Yep.”

“But why not stay there once she’d found a way back?”

“Ah,” the Doctor said, almost burning himself when something sparked. “That is a little harder to explain.”

“You used your TARDIS to come here?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t have it now, or you wouldn’t need my infirmary.”

“Doctor?” Rose was peeking out of the doorway. He glanced at Teddy then went over to her without answering the implied question hanging in the air. As he approached he realized Rose was blushing furiously. 

“Can you do up the strings?” she whispered. “I can’t reach an I don’t want anything… hangin’ out.”

She turned away from him and he saw that the smock did up in the back with a series of ties, and it was hanging open—

—to reveal a large expanse of Rose’s naked skin.

He swallowed thickly. His mouth had suddenly gone dry.

To be fair, she wasn’t entirely naked. She’d left her knickers on. Plain white, with a bit of lace running around the top. Though why she’d bothered he wasn’t sure, as the thin bit of fabric barely covered anything… Although, maybe that was the point. What he couldn’t see was nearly as fascinating as what he could see. Which was a lot. The entire curve of her back from her waist all the way up to her neck. He found he very much wanted to run his fingers down the curve of her spine, and then—

“Doctor?” she hissed.

“Right,” he responded, deftly tying up the strings without letting himself get any more distracted by the fact that he could also see a great deal of her legs as well. Which he was definitely not watching as she walked back out into the infirmary.

“If you’ll just have a seat right here,” Teddy said, indicating a long, white reclining chair, a bit like a dentist’s chair. Rose climbed up into it, tugging at the hem of the smock, clearly trying to maintain some dignity.

The Doctor tried to distract himself by picking up the sensors and fiddling with settings on the computers.

“Watch where you’re stickin’ that thing,” Rose said, eyeing the probe warily.

The Doctor smiled. “Don’t worry. Won’t hurt a bit.”

The scans didn’t take long and, true to the Doctor’s word, didn’t hurt. She felt a tingling in her skin, and she felt a bit warm all over before it was done, but she’d had much worse. Then he drew a little blood — which also didn’t really hurt thanks to Teddy’s advanced equipment — and did another sort of scan of her head. Before long, the Doctor pronounced that he was finished and she hurried gratefully off to put her clothes back on.

“This is good,” the Doctor said, studying his tablet while Rose went to change. “Well, not good, but — I think I can fix it. I'll make you a list of the equipment I'll need.” 

He looked up to find Teddy giving him a mildly shifty look.

"If you're worried about payment, you can name your price," he said flatly.

“No, it’s not that. I just… I'm not sure I should help you.” 

“Why not?”

“It would be interfering with a lower species.”

The Doctor scowled. He’d heard this rhetoric before, long ago. “Rose isn't a species. She's one woman — one dying woman. Are you saying you could just let her die?”

Teddy shifted uncomfortably. “It was her choice to go across the void. These are the natural consequences of her actions.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Fine. Don't think of it as helping her. Think of it as helping a fellow Time Lord.”

“A Renegade,” Teddy said.

“Oi! That’s a bit rude. We got trapped in a parallel universe! What makes you think—”

“Because you fell in love with a human.”

The Doctor said nothing. Behind him, he heard the door slide open and Rose emerge.

“I’m not prejudiced, if that’s what you’re thinking!” Teddy said quickly. He turned and grinned at Rose. “I love humans. Fascinated by you. My father was half human.”

“Wait, that can happen?” Rose said, a look of shock on her face.

“Well, it hasn’t happened very often, but it is biologically possible if that’s what you’re asking,” Teddy said with a laugh. 

“Hang on,” Rose said, “if your father was half human, doesn’t that make you part human as well?”

“I was Loomed,” Teddy said. “They took the best bits of my parents’ genetics and wove them together to create me. And they left the human bits out. My mother insisted. So I'm pure Time Lord. But I still have a soft spot for humans.” 

“Your family must be so proud,” the Doctor said acidly.

“Excuse me?” Teddy turned on him, a frown crossing his normally placid face. “It's because of my family that I must be beyond reproach. I’m here on a research permit — observation only. ” 

“It’s all right,” Rose said, putting a hand on the Doctor’s arm just as he was about to say something they might all regret. “You’ve helped us a lot already. Hasn’t he, Doctor? You got what you needed?”

The Doctor nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Rose smiled and Teddy visibly relaxed. “Thank you. Really. You didn’t have to help us, and we appreciate it.” 

Teddy nodded. “Of course. The least I could do. I’ll show you out.”

As they walked back into the control room, the Doctor said, “Actually, could I bother you with one more favor? The history I’ve been able to access so far in this universe is a bit Earth-centric. Any chance you could?” He held up his tablet and waggled it hopefully.

“Of course!” Teddy said amicably. He grabbed the tablet and fitted it into a convenient slot on the console. “All of recorded history? No problem. I’ll have to upgrade the memory.”

“Ah, ta for that,” the Doctor said, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth a bit. 

Something dinged, and Teddy removed the tablet just as a little panel slid open right in front of the Doctor and something small and metal and shiny, about the size of a pencil, emerged. 

“Oh my god,” Rose said.

“You’re kidding me,” the Doctor said, awe clear on his face.

“What’s that?” Teddy asked, looking confused.

“That,” the Doctor repeated as he gingerly, reverently removed the device from the console, “is a sonic screwdriver.”

Teddy snorted. “What the devil is it for?”

“Oh, you know,” the Doctor said, turning it over gently in his fingers. “This and that.” With a sigh, he held it out to Teddy.

“It’s not mine,” Teddy said with a shrug. “I suppose the TARDIS must have meant it for you.”

The Doctor looked up at the shining column in front of him with a mixture of joy and grief. “I _was_ thinking about… Are you sure?”

Teddy shrugged again. “It’s the strangest thing. Ever since we got here, the TARDIS seems to have a mind of it’s own…”

As if on cue, there was another beep from the console and one of the monitors flickered.


	8. In which there is danger, a decision, and a trip to Cardiff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait on this chapter! I write for a living, and sometimes the muse runs out of fuel before I get to my own projects. But know that this story hasn't been abandoned!

_Teddy shrugged again. “It’s the strangest thing. Ever since we got here, the TARDIS seems to have a mind of it’s own…”_

_As if on cue, there was another beep from the console and one of the monitors flickered._

Teddy grabbed the monitor and swung it around, simultaneously pulling out a pair of large, square, horn-rimmed glasses. 

“What’s going on?” the Doctor asked.

“I’ve been following these strange radiation readings,” Teddy said, frowning at the monitor. “Astonishingly high levels of void radiation. At first I thought it was you two—”

“We’ve been following them as well,” Rose said. “At Torchwood, I mean. A spike turned up near my house yesterday, around the same time the shed caught fire.”

The Doctor strode over to stare at the monitor over Teddy’s shoulder, and was already pulling on his own glasses. Rose couldn’t help but smile at the sight of them both frowning myopically at the screen.

“That’s in London,” the Doctor said. “Right by Torchwood.”

“I’ve got to call Malcolm,” Rose said, fumbling for her mobile.

“Or, we could just tell him in person,” the Doctor said, glancing at Teddy. Teddy grinned and flipped a few switches. The time rotor whirred to life. 

~*~

Rose wasn’t sure she’d ever get over it. There was a particular thrill to opening a door and finding oneself in a completely different place. As she followed the Doctor out of Teddy’s TARDIS, she felt it again.

But it was accompanied by something else. A different pang of longing and loss. She found herself wondering if she’d ever see her TARDIS again. Would the little chunk of coral growing in a tank ever feel like home?

The Doctor flicked on his brand new screwdriver and she felt herself smiling. But then a new thought struck: Was this just prolonging the inevitable? What happened when Teddy left and they were back on their own again? Grounded.

“This way,” the Doctor said, jogging off, following some signal only he understood. 

Rose shook her head slightly, bringing herself back to the present. Time enough to worry about all that later. With a quick grin at Teddy, she took off after the Doctor.

She recognized the neighborhood. They were just a few blocks from Torchwood. It was mostly abandoned warehouses and industrial buildings. The council kept talking about rehabbing the neighborhood, turning it into lofts or some such, and Torchwood kept quietly persuading them not to, not keen on having too many nosy neighbors.

She and Teddy followed the Doctor around a corner into an alley between several warehouses. He was stopped a bit more than half way down, fiddling with the sonic. “I don’t understand,” he said, “it should be right—”

As he spoke, something horrible burst out from a narrow space between two buildings. It was vaguely humanoid shaped, but terrifyingly twisted, melted, black and charred. The roundish blob that might have been a head turned towards Rose. It had no features, but she felt like it was staring at her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could even take a breath, it was on her. Flat stumps that might have been hands were pressing to her face. And it burned.

Rose began to scream.

“ROSE!”

She felt like her blood had turned to acid. Like every cell in her body were suddenly poison. 

And then, just as quickly as it began, it stopped. Her knees buckled and she hit the pavement. She felt cool hands beneath her arms, hauling her back up to her feet, and vaguely recognized that Teddy was holding her up. 

She shook her head to clear it. The pain was gone, but she still felt dizzy. A high pitched sound she’d thought was her own ears ringing suddenly stopped.

“It went that way,” Teddy said. “I’ve never seen anything move so fast!”

“Rose.” She squinted at the blue light buzzing in her face.

“I’m alright,” she said, not sounding entirely convincing even to herself. She pushed away from Teddy to stand on her own, only wobbling a little. She noticed the fear shrouded in the Doctor’s eyes. “I’m OK,” she said more gently to him. He didn’t look convinced. His fingers ghosted over her skin, as though he were afraid to touch her. 

Teddy had pulled out a little brown notebook. Rose noticed the circular symbols flashing rapidly across the pages. “That thing looks to have been the source of the radiation.”

“What _is_ it?” Rose asked, hearing the horror in her own voice.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor said, still scanning with his sonic. “What did it do to you?”

She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know. It touched me and then — god, it hurt. It hurt so much…”

The Doctor’s eyes grew cold and hard. She reached for his hand, but he moved just slightly so that she missed, grasping only air.

“Could it be…?” Teddy hesitated as Rose and the Doctor looked at him. “There are stories, legends really, of creatures that actually live _in_ the void…” 

The Doctor turned away and started scanning again. “Could be. Maybe it came through with you on one of your jumps, Rose. Got caught in the stream.”

“Nothin’ like that came through with me!” Rose said. “I think I would’ve noticed.”

“It could’ve been tiny,” the Doctor continued, “and then it was feeding on the energy from the dimension cannon to grow.”

“How can it even have a physical form here?” Teddy asked, shaking his head. 

“Who knows? Improvising. Life finds a way. It’s not doing very well though. With the radiation it’s giving off, I think it’s disintegrating. It’s starving, because—”

“When the cannon was switched off, so was its food supply,” Teddy finished.

“So it came looking for you,” The Doctor said, turning to Rose. “The richest source of void energy it could find.” She watched the muscles in his jaw clench. “Teddy, get her out of here. Take her somewhere safe.”

“What?!” Rose exclaimed. “I’m not goin’ anywhere! Not without you! I can take care of myself, Doctor. S’what I’ve been doin’ for the last three years.” She saw him wince, and instantly regretted her words.

“Rose, it’s starving. It will be back.”

“All the more reason to leave!”

“It’s not after me, it’s after you.”

 

“It wants void radiation, yeah?” she protested. “Well, you’ve got it too! I saw it.”

“Compared to you, I’m just a taste. A biscuit. A jammy dodger. You’re the main course. Besides which, you’re…” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, making it all stick up on end. “You’re ill. You’re not in top form.” 

Rose looked torn. 

“I have to find it,” he said. “Find out if we can — I don’t know! Help it. Send it back where it came from. I can’t do that if it’s trying to snack on you.”

“Alright,” she sighed. “Alright! Go to Torchwood. Get backup.” She reached out and touched his arm. She felt him stiffen. “You don’t have to do this alone.” Slowly he nodded.

“An’ you’n me are havin’ words about your worrying habit of sending me away when this is done.”

The Doctor grinned crookedly, then caught Teddy’s eye over her shoulder. Teddy nodded solemnly. 

~*~

Rose stared at the TARDIS’ closed door. “I don’t like this.”

“Nor do I,” Teddy agreed. “I mean, it’s one thing having you in here for a few medical tests — that’s humanitarian work! But traveling about, I don’t know. Although,” he flipped a few switches. “I suppose you’re used to it?”

Rose sighed and turned back to look at the console. “Yeah. Spent quite a while in our TARDIS. I mean, the Doctor’s TARDIS. A couple of years, at least. It’s a bit hard to tell you know, with — well. You know.”

Teddy smiled and flipped a few more buttons and switches. “How did you meet?”

Rose leaned on one of the railings around the console. “Oh, you know. Boy blows up girl’s job, girl finds out boy is actually an alien, girl and alien save the world. The usual.”

“Save the world?” 

“There was this… I dunno. Plastic stuff. The nesting consciousness?”

“Nestene?”

“Yeah, that’s it. It took over all the shop window dummies. Like an army. It was going to use Earth as a breeding planet.”

“That’s appalling!” Teddy seemed truly shocked. 

Rose shrugged. “Hardly the worst we saw. I mean, while we were travelin’, we stopped the Slitheen, the Jagrafess, the Gelth, the Sycorax, an alien werewolf thingy and the Cybermen from takin’ over the Earth.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Oh, and the Daleks, of course.”

“That’s incredible,” Teddy said, shaking his head. “What would all those races want with Earth?” he wondered. Then he asked, “What’s a Dalek?”

Rose cocked her head at him. “You’re jokin’, right?”

Before he could answer the TARDIS jolted violently, and both of them were thrown momentarily off balance. 

“Oh, no you don’t!” Teddy exclaimed, flipping switches and mashing buttons desperately. “Now, stop that! I didn’t even tell you where we wanted to go!”

“She decided to take us somewhere safe, yeah?” Rose asked, walking over to the monitor. 

“Decided? She can’t _decide_. She’s a machine. She does what I tell her to do! And she’s not a she, she’s an It!” All the lights on the console went out at once. 

Rose smiled just a bit. “I think you’ve offended her.” She pushed the monitor over towards him. “Well, go on then. Where are we?”

He pulled out his hipster glasses and squinted at the screen. “It says we’re in Cardiff, Wales.”

“Oh! That’s alright, then. Bit boring.” Rose looked up at the time rotor. “You couldn’t have found us a nice safe tropical island?” She looked back at Teddy with a grin. “We’ve got a Torchwood substation in Cardiff. ‘Cos of the rift.”

“Seriously? In Cardiff?”

She grinned. “Come on. I’ll show you.” She reached out and patted the console as she headed toward the door and said, “Good job, luv.”

Teddy frowned. 

~*~

The Doctor followed the readings on his new sonic (he had a new sonic!) for only a few hundred meters before they suddenly disappeared. Teddy was right: this creature, whatever it was, moved incredibly fast. He couldn’t tell if the thing had somehow teleported, disappeared, or simply moved so quickly that he could no longer pick up a trace of it. 

He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. Whatever the truth, it wasn’t good. It wanted Rose and—

He felt a shudder run through him and suddenly his limbs felt shaky. The adrenalin coursing through his veins was wearing off, and his part-human body wasn’t capable of the minute biological compensations to ward off the deleterious effects. A part of his mind observed all this with detached fascination. 

He’d almost lost Rose. He could hear her scream echo in his memory and it made his hands clench into fists. He tried to steady his breath, unclench his jaw with logic. They’d been in danger before. More often than not, he’d been the one leading the charge into danger, putting her in harm’s way. Why was this any different?

Because he was different, he realized, slowly unclenching his fists.

He’d lost her. That was the difference. He’d failed, she’d fallen, and only some very serendipitous twists of fate had saved her from death.

And he had barely survived that loss. It had shaken him to his very core, changed him more than he wanted to admit.

He’d lost her once. He couldn’t do it again.

Grudgingly, he turned and stomped towards Torchwood. If he was going to find this thing and ensure that it never laid a twisted stump on Rose again, he was going to need help.


	9. In which there is an alien alarm, whiskey, and some awkward conversation.

Torchwood 6 wasn’t a full operations base. It was just a monitoring station for the rift that ran through Cardiff, and it was run by a woman named Suzie Costello and her science officer, Toshiko Sato. 

And they were more than a little surprised when Agent Tyler — daughter of _Director_ Tyler — showed up in the tourist information office just off the Plass with a man in a green Vitex tee shirt and a fedora. 

Rose had only been to the Cardiff substation once before. She’d found some excuse and come looking for Jack, truth be told. But either he’d never taken a Chula war ship to the London blitz, or he’d realized his mistake before he blew up half the city, or someone else had stopped him — whatever the case, London hadn’t exploded and he wasn’t running Torchwood Cardiff and never had been.

Somewhere in the base, an alarm was sounding insistently. 

“Sorry about that,” Tosh said, hurrying over to a workstation. “It’s our alien alarm. It’s going crazy, but I can’t figure out what it thinks it’s seeing.”

“Oh, sorry, that’s me!” Teddy said brightly. “Hello! I’m an alien.”

Suzie stared at him. “We mostly use it to track Weevils.”

Rose’s phone started to ring, and she turned away to answer it.

“So,” Suzie said, obviously a little uncomfortable. “Sorry, I don’t know a polite way to ask this. What kind of alien are you?”

“I’m a Time Lord,” Teddy answered. “Ever heard of us?”

Suzie and Tosh shook their heads silently.

“Nor should you have,” he said with a grin.

“But,” Tosh said hesitantly, “you look awfully, well, human. Is that a disguise or a hologram or something?”

“Nope! Genuine article. But be fair; from my perspective you humans look awfully Time Lord.”

“That was the Doctor,” Rose said, coming back to the group. “They lost the… void creature, but he and Malcolm have some ideas how to track it and they want to set the systems up. He said it’ll take a couple of days and,” she scowled, “he wants me to stay here. In Cardiff.” She glanced up at Tosh and Suzie. “Er, no offence.”

“No problem,” Teddy said with a grin. “Ladies. Lovely to meet you. We’ll be back in a few days.”

“Sorry, where are we going?” Rose asked as she followed Teddy back out onto the Plass, where it had started spitting rain, and towards his TARDIS, which had taken the form of a rather ugly modern art sculpture.

At least, she assumed that was the TARDIS.

“You may have forgotten, Ms. Tyler,” Teddy said, pulling the door open with a sweeping gesture, “but the TARDIS travels in time, as well as space.”

~*~

“Go home,” Donna said, shoving his greatcoat at him. 

“Busy,” the Doctor replied.

“Knackered is more like,” Donna retorted. She slapped her hands on the metal lab bench, startling him and the other scientists working with him. “That’s it!” she shouted. “Pack it in for the night. Be back here, ready to work, at oh-six-hundred!”

 

“Donna—” he began.

“No, look. She’s safe, right? In Cardiff? So this’ll keep. It’ll be here in the morning and you’ll all be able to come at it with new eyes.”

“I don’t need sleep!”

“Well, the rest of us do,” Donna said, turning her back on him. 

When he realized that — regardless of her actual station or authority — the rest of the scientists had listened to Donna and were shutting things down for the night, he reluctantly gave in. 

He walked outside and stared up at the black-orange London sky. Only a handful of stars were visible. Stars he could name without conscious thought — that is, if their various and relative species had seen fit to give them the same names in this different universe.

Which was about when he realized he was miles from Pete’s house with no car. 

_“It wasn’t Aberdeen. Where you left me. It was Croyden!”_

He ended up taking the tube to the suburbs (he had a new sonic!) and then walking the last few miles back to Pete’s house. He glanced at the cold, dark carriage house (where Rose wasn’t) and instead turned and knocked on the door of the main house.

“Doctor!” Pete said, looking surprised as he opened the door. 

“We need to talk,” the Doctor said.

~*~

“Are all TARDISes the same, or do they have, like, their own personalities?”

Teddy snorted. “You keep talking like it’s a person.”

“Well, she is. Isn’t she? She feels like my TARDIS.” Rose ran her hand along the console before catching herself. “Er, the Doctor’s TARDIS. The one we traveled in, I mean.”

Teddy was watching her interestedly. “You never did say: how did he lose his TARDIS?”

“Oh, she’s not lost,” Rose said quickly. “I mean, not really. She and the Doctor are still—” She realized her mistake as soon as the words had tumbled out of her mouth. The Doctor — her Doctor — had been rather cagey about giving Teddy the whole story. 

Teddy was still watching her. She sighed. “Look, I don’t really know all the details. The Doctor — he had this hand, in a jar. His hand. From right after he regenerated. Got cut off in a duel with the Sycorax, see, an’ I guess Jack found it and _pickled_ it or something, which — don’t ask me why he’d want to do that. Anyway, the Doctor was shot by a Dalek, right after we found each other again, and he started to regenerate, only he didn’t want to, so he put all the energy into his hand and then — this is where I get a bit fuzzy — but Donna did something and poof!” She threw her hands up into the air. “Two Doctors.”

“Two… A metacrisis?” 

“Yeah,” Rose nodded, thinking that sounded about right. 

“And Donna, she’s… a Time Lord?” 

“No. A human. From Chiswick.” 

Teddy scratched his head. “A _human_ -Time Lord metacrisis?” Suddenly a look of realization dawned across his face. “That’s your Doctor. That’s why he doesn’t register as full Time Lord. I thought it was the fact that he’s from another universe but — _blimey_. He’s human.”

“Part human,” Rose said firmly. She felt as if the Doctor might not be pleased when he discovered his secret was out. 

“And the other one — the original Doctor, he brought you back here.”

Rose nodded. “My family’s here, my mum…”

“And the Doctor. He stayed with you. Part human.” Teddy adjusted his glasses. “That’s a hell of a love story.”

“Anyway, wasn’t your dad part human or something?” Rose said quickly. 

“He was, yeah. My grandfather was a human.”

“How’d that happen, then?” Rose asked, grateful for the change of subject. 

“My grandmother visited Earth several times with her grandfather. He was fascinated with humans. A bit like me, I suppose. She even took a human name.”

“Really?” Rose said. “Not like Theodor-ander…”

Teddy smirked. “No. Her name was Susan.”

Rose grinned, the tip of her tongue sticking between her teeth. “How exotic! And she fell in love with a human?”

“It caused quite the stir,” Teddy agreed. “But they stayed on Earth for the rest of his life. Eventually she brough my father back to be educated on Gallifrey.”

“She didn’t mind staying on Earth?” Rose asked. “I mean, she gave up travelin’ and adventure an all.”

Teddy shrugged. “I suppose she could have left if she’d really wanted. Maybe falling in love was enough of an adventure.”

“Yeah,” Rose said quietly. “Maybe.”

~*~

Pete held up the bottle of whiskey in invitation, and poured out two fingers for himself when the Doctor shook his head. “This thing. It wants Rose?”

“It wants void radiation, as best we can tell” the Doctor said, “and Rose is saturated with it from all the times she jumped across the void.”

“Looking for you,” Pete said mildly. The Doctor didn’t reply. 

“She was furious with me,” Pete continued, rubbing his face in his hands. “For saving her — or rather, for not being able to take her back to you, I mean.”

“Is this turning into the, ‘what are your intentions toward my daughter?’ talk?” the Doctor asked, quirking an eyebrow as Pete downed his drink in a few quick gulps.

“That’s what I’m going to tell Jackie,” Pete said, setting the glass down with a thunk, “but I think I’ve had a pretty good idea of your intentions towards Rose since before I even knew she was my daughter.” He finished his drink and set the glass on the desk. 

“Which reminds me…” He stood up and held his hand out. The Doctor frowned a little, but took it to shake.

“Thank you,” Pete said formally.

“For what?” the Doctor asked.

“For sending me to save her. That was the moment I became Rose’s father, and I’ve never properly thanked you for it.” He sat back down, looking mildly embarrassed. “I don’t know how, but it _was_ you — wasn’t it?”

The Doctor sighed. “Part of being a Time Lord is that we can sense timelines. Things that might be, things that could be. Things that should never be.” He paused, his hand clenching on his knee. “In that moment, when I knew she was falling, I could see every possibility, every single way that it could go from the most likely to the most impossible. And most of them — 99 percent of them ended with her death — or worse.” 

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “We’re never meant to influence the timelines. When my people were alive, it was one of the highest crimes to interfere with the natural course of events by influencing a timeline. Very few of my people could even have done it. But…”

He leaned forward suddenly. “Have you ever seen those stories, in the news, on the telly, where a person lifts a car, by themselves, to save someone? The adrenalin kicks in and — boom!”

Pete nodded.

“It was a bit like that,” the Doctor said, leaning back in his chair. “Didn’t know I had it in me, to be honest. You popping up at that exact moment, in exactly the right place — well, it wasn’t the _least_ likely timeline, but it was certainly right up there.” 

His face grew darker, his voice very quiet. “But I couldn’t let her die. Not like that. So I chose a different way. I willed it to happen.”

Pete nodded again. “Everyone asked me after, how I knew she was in trouble. But I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t even think. I just punched the button and there she was.”

The Doctor cleared his throat and sat up. “Suppose I should be the one thanking you, then,” he said, a little more brightly. 

Pete grabbed the bottle and poured two drinks. “Here’s to never having to save her from life-threatening situations again.”

The Doctor lifted his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

~*~

As the Doctor headed for the door, back out to the (dark, empty) carriage house he — quite literally — ran into Tony in the hall.

“Wotcha, Tony,” he said sparing a smile for the little boy. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

“Where’s Rose?” Tony asked, blatantly ignoring the question.

“Ah. Rose is… On a mission. For Torchwood.” 

Tony nodded slowly. “I love Rose,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I told Mum I was going to marry her when I grow up, but she said I can’t cos Rose is my sister.”

“That does complicate things,” the Doctor agreed. 

“Do you love Rose?”

The Doctor let out a long breath he was unaware he’d been holding. “Oh yes,” he said softly, “very much.”

Tony’s eyes got wide suddenly. “Maybe you could marry her.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows shot straight up until they threatened to disappear into his hair. “Er, well. I suppose. If she wanted to…”

“That’d be brilliant,” Tony decided. Then he asked, “If you marry Rose, will you be my brother?”

“Er… Sort of?”

“I’d love to have a brother. I asked Mum for one and she said she wasn’t going through ‘all that’ again. Which means no. But if you married her, I’d get you for a brother. That’d be brilliant.”

“S’pose it would,” the Doctor said, a little dazed by 4-year-old logic.

“Will you get me a glass of water?” 

Tony led the Doctor down the hall to Jackie’s gleaming kitchen, where the Doctor fetched him a glass of water and sent him back to bed.

“Oh, and Tony?” the Doctor called before the boy was out of sight. “Best not to mention the brother thing to your Mum, eh?”

Tony nodded sagely. 

~*~

“How old are you?” Teddy asked as he flipped a few of the controls on the console. 

“It’s rude to ask a lady her age,” Rose quipped. She never quite knew how to answer that question, as basic as it seemed. “I’m twenty-six, more or less” she replied at last. “How old are you?”

“One hundred and forty-seven.”

“A mere child,” she said with a grin. “The Doctor told me he’s nine hundred and three. Even older now, I suppose.” Her smile faded as she remembered. “‘S funny. I didn’t believe him at first. Thought he didn’t want to say his real age and scare me off.”

“You don’t seem the type to scare easily.” 

The time rotor slowed and stopped. Almost immediately, Rose’s phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Rose,” the Doctor said breathlessly, “it’s coming.”


	10. In which there is a road trip, a snog with unforeseen side effects, and a history lesson.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Gosh,” Tosh breathed. “Your aliens are all a lot better looking than ours.” Suddenly her eyes went wide. She turned to Ianto. “Did I just say that out loud?” He nodded solemnly. “OK. I’ll just be over here, dying quietly.”

The doors of Torchwood 6 burst open and a klaxon started blaring. Suzie, Tosh, and Rose rushed to the entrance just as a ginger woman with her arms full of luggage appeared in the doorway.

“Do not _EVER_ ,” Donna said as she dumped suitcases and duffle bags on the floor of the hub, “take that man on a road trip. He never. Shuts. His gob.”

Rose laughed delightedly and headed straight for the Doctor who had ambled in behind Donna. He met her halfway gathering her into a tight hug. They pulled apart just enough to kiss chastely, but even that was enough to send shivers down her spine.

“He wanted to stop at every roadside attraction,” Ianto added, carrying in what appeared to be the TARDIS coral and her aquarium. “We liked to never have got here.”

“Hello,” the Doctor said quietly, still apparently unwilling to let her go. 

“Hello,” she grinned back. “I see you brought reinforcements.”

“Weee-elll, they brought me, rather. Didn’t seem to want me behind the wheel of a car. I told them I’m a very good driver!” he turned to shout over his shoulder at Donna.

“Whatever you say, Rainman,” Donna retorted. 

“Is your friend Teddy coming back?” Tosh asked. Rose realized the sound she was hearing was the alien alarm was going off again.

“Er, the Doctor’s an alien, too. Actually.” She glanced over at Ianto and Donna, who were both staring. 

“What a surprise,” Donna deadpanned. “Honestly, I’m completely shocked.”

“Gosh,” Tosh breathed. “Your aliens are all a lot better looking than ours.” Suddenly her eyes went wide. She turned to Ianto. “Did I just say that out loud?” He nodded solemnly. “OK. I’ll just be over here, dying quietly.”

“Teddy dropped me off,” Rose said to the Doctor. “He said he had some things to take care of and would be back in a day or two.”

The Doctor nodded, clearly distracted. “I missed you,” he said softly. Rose must have looked surprised because he frowned. “Oh,” he said, letting her go. “Right. You and Teddy came the quick way.”

“Yeah…” Rose said, trying to read the minute expressions crossing his face. 

“While I was stuck on the slow path.”

Rose didn’t know what to say to that. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he spun away from her.

“Which is good, actually,” he said loudly, “because it gave us time to work out what to do with our grabby-hands visitor. Er, not hands. Stumps. Whatever.”

“You’ve figured out what it wants?” Rose asked.

“Yes. It wants you. Probably to eat all that tasty void radiation you foolishly sucked up.” 

“Oi, we’re not feedin’ Rose to the void creature,” Donna said. “Are we?”

“No! ‘Course not. We’re using Rose as bait!”

“I’m not lovin’ where this is going,” Rose said, putting her hands on her hips.

“Malcolm and I decided that the best thing to do is lure it here, to Cardiff, and shove it in the rift. That way, it can hopefully get back out into the void where it belongs.”

“Will that work?” Rose asked. 

The Doctor shrugged expressively. “No idea! But it’s better than the alternative.”

“Which is?”

“We think it’s going to explode.”

Rose blinked at him. “Explode?! When? Where?”

“Again,” the Doctor said, busying himself around Tosh’s workstation, “no idea! But our best guess — and that’s the best guess of a genius Time Lord and a pretty bright human, mind — within the next three or four days. A week at the outside.”

“And what happens if it explodes?” Suzi asked. 

“It’ll take out roughly three square kilometers completely and spew void radiation for another 10 or so.” 

“So we have to lure it to Cardiff and push it into the void in the next four days,” Rose said.

“Yup,” the Doctor replied, popping the P.

“And you’ve got a plan for how to accomplish that?”

“Oh yes!”

“But not before we all get a good night’s sleep,” Donna said bossily. She jerked a thumb at the Doctor and said in a loud stage whisper, “I don’t think he sleeps unless you force ‘im to.”

The Doctor scrubbed his hand over his face. “Donna, I need to get to work. And besides, where are you going to kip, in the Pterodactyl nest?”

“Well, if you’re going to be here a while,” Suzie said, “Torchwood keeps a flat for visiting… whatevers. You can stay there.”

“Marvelous,” Donna said. “I’m knackered. Lead the way!”

~*~

“There’s only two rooms,” Ianto announced as they entered the posh, modern flat. “I put you and the Doctor in that one and Donna in the other. I’ll take the sofa.”

“Ta for that,” Donna said, heading into her room. “Ooooh, Torchwood don’t do things by halves, do they? Just look at the size of this en suite! If you get tired of the sofa, Ianto, you can sleep in the tub!”

“Thanks Ianto,” Rose said, tiredly. She didn’t even have the energy to worry about the details of sharing a bedroom and a bed with the Doctor. Exhaustion would win out over awkwardness every time.

She picked up the bag her mum had packed for her and headed into the bedroom, the Doctor following at her heels. She’d barely slung the bag onto the bed and registered that he’d shut the door when suddenly she felt his hands on her arms. 

He grabbed her and spun her around and kissed her, pressing her roughly against the wall. This was not the chaste, almost embarrassed kiss she’d received earlier in the Hub. She arched her back, grinding her hips against him and — oh, thank god. That was one riddle solved. He was most definitely reacting the same way any human bloke would. 

“I was worried about you,” he said, ghosting kisses up her jawline towards her temple. 

His hands found the hem of her shirt and skimmed beneath it, his long, elegant fingers tracing patterns across her skin and she gasped— 

— there was a flash of light. She was running towards him — no, she was watching herself run towards him and there was a Dalek and suddenly so much _pain_ —

Rose and the Doctor both gasped and pulled apart suddenly.

“What was _that_?” 

“I’m sorry!” the Doctor said, sounding slightly panicked. “Are you OK? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright!” Rose assured him. “Just — was that what I think it was?”

“It was a memory—”

“—Of when we found each other. I _felt_ you get shot!”

“I’m so sorry.” He started pacing, tearing at his hair slightly. “I shouldn’t have… I was just so worried, and I missed you, and this _body_ —”

“Hey,” she said, stopping him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “It’s OK. I’m sayin’ it’s OK. I just didn’t expect it, is all.” He tightened his grip around her, holding her tightly. 

~*~

When he finally let her go, they changed in slightly awkward silence, the Doctor keeping his eyes firmly trained on his own business lest his body get any more treacherous ideas, then climbed into the big bed next to one another. To his great relief, she reached for him without hesitation, curling against his side, letting him wrap an arm around her as she rested her head against his chest.

“You going to tell me what happened?” she prompted.

“There’s no such thing as casual sex for a Time Lord,” he blurted out. “Not that I’m saying — you wouldn’t be — I mean you and me… Erm…”

She snorted a little laugh into his shoulder at his discomfort, which he took as a good sign.

“Time Lords are touch telepaths. My telepathy works best with skin to skin contact. The more contact, the stronger the link.”

She traced a little circle on his tee shirt against his chest. “So, the more skin…”

“Exactly.” 

“You could see each other’s thoughts while you…”

“More than that. Much more than that. Time Lords could see the other’s thoughts, feel what the other feels, and most… disconcertingly, it’s nearly impossible to keep up any mental blocks when you’re, uh, in flagrante delicto. 

“Most of the time, you could imagine a door and shut me out of anything you didn’t want me to see. But it’s nearly impossible to do that while you’re… otherwise occupied. So a Time Lord would only ever physically have sex with someone they trusted completely.”

She pulled away from him, sitting up. “So that’s why you never — with me, I mean—”

“No,” he said gently. “I trust you with my life, Rose Tyler, and — by the way, count those.” She smiled a little. “No, I just… I’m not sure what would happen to you.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?” 

“Maybe nothing,” he continued. “Humans don’t possess much natural psychic ability, after all. There was always the chance that you might not notice a thing. But what just happened seems to confirm that’s not in the cards. Or, now that we know the TARDIS awoke some latent psychic ability in you, it might be similar to the experience of a Time Lord. Or.”

“Or?”

“Or it could overwhelm you. Burn up your brain and leave you a very lovely vegetable.” 

“Okay…” Rose said slowly. “So what do we do?”

“We go slow.”

Rose snorted. “Five years isn’t slow enough for you?” she said, hearing her mum’s voice in her head.

The Doctor shrugged. “Time Lord courtships can last decades before the relationship is consummated physically.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “I promised you forever,” she said, “and m’not puttin’ any restrictions on that. But… well, our forevers have changed now, right? One life an’ all that…”

“Point taken,” the Doctor conceded. “We might have to move things up a bit.” 

Rose suddenly yawned like a cat.

“But not tonight,” he added. “When was the last time you slept?”

“Er… Three days ago, give or take?”

“Go ahead. Get some rest. You need it.”

“What about you?” 

He picked up his TARDIS-enhanced, Torchwood-issue tablet off the nightstand. “I have all of recorded history to catch up on.”

~*~

“ARRGH!” 

Rose jolted awake. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“He did it. Me. This me. The here me.”

“Did what?”

“And they banished him for it. Those hypocrites!”

“Doctor, you’re not speaking in complete thoughts.”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. Even more so than usual. 

“A long time ago, a very long time ago, the Time Lord High Council sent me to Skaro, the Daleks’ homeworld, back to the moments of their creation. That’s when I met Davros for the first time — when he was on the cusp of creating the first Daleks.

“The Time Lords wanted me to find out if the Daleks had a weakness, something that could be used against them, and — if I could — to destroy them, prevent them from ever being created.”

Rose frowned and wrestled herself into a sitting position in the bed. “Isn’t that a paradox? If you destroyed them, you never would’ve been sent to destroy them… or something?”

“Timelines around the Daleks have always been wildly in flux. Anything is possible with them, it seems.”

“But you didn’t do it.”

“I couldn’t. I was young, and I had so much mercy. I couldn’t do it. But apparently, in this universe I did.”

“ _What?_ ” Rose couldn’t tell if he was being deliberately obtuse or if she were still half asleep.

“You asked me, that first night we saw Teddy, if there could be another me here, another Doctor. There is.”

Rose chewed on that thought for a moment. Well, she’d already dealt with two... “Where is he? What happened to him? He hasn’t been hanging around Earth like you did.” 

“No. He was banished.”

“Banished?”

“After he destroyed the Daleks, there was an outcry. There were factions that weren’t happy with state sponsored genocide. He was put on trial, found guilty, and banished. A scapegoat.” 

“Does that mean… Is he still alive out there, somewhere?”

“No idea. There’s very little in here. It’s barely a footnote in Gallifrey’s history! He averts the most terrible war in the history of time, and he gets half a paragraph and banishment as thanks.”

Rose reached out and rubbed the back of his hand. “That’s why there’s Time Lords here. No Time War?”

“No Time War. It never happened.” 

“DOCTOR!”

Rose nearly tumbled over as the Doctor vaulted out of the bed. He was already yanking open the door by the time she had disentangled her legs from the duvet.

“Donna? What is it? What’s wrong?”

Rose stumbled toward the living room of the flat, heart pounding in her ears.

The little piece of TARDIS coral the Doctor had brought from London had burst out of its terrarium, and was now roughly the size of a ficus and threatening to hit the ceiling.

“Is it _supposed_ to do that?” Donna demanded as she turned away from the coral tree that was threatening to take over the living room.

“Oh yes!” the Doctor crowed. “Well, in theory. I mean, I didn’t expect her to grow that fast, but it’s brilliant! _Molto bene_! Although, getting her out the door might be complicated…”

“Is it a plant?” Donna asked, reaching out to touch it. The Doctor swatted her hand away.

“A plant? Don’t be ridiculous! This is my frankly astonishing time and space ship.”

“Space ship?” She blinked at him. “Where are your trousers?”

Rose put her hand to her forehead and longed for a coffee. It was going to be a long day. 

Out of nowhere, Ianto appeared and handed the Doctor a robe before walking over and handing her a large steaming mug. 

“Ianto,” Rose said after she’d taken a long drink. “Whatever we pay you, double it immediately.”

He smiled into his own mug. 

“Rose!” The Doctor bounded over to her. “Rift energy! God, I’m thick. Thick thick thick! I didn’t even consider the possibility that we could come to Cardiff. Why didn’t you mention it? Never mind. The TARDIS loves it! Look at her! Little sprout. Though we might need to find somewhere bigger to put her. Can we take out the ceiling? Or, I suppose there’s a flat above. Who has the flat above? Ianto, can we buy the flat above this one?”

“No coffee for him,” Rose said sternly.


End file.
